


Here at the End of All Things

by FortressCaulfield



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Arcadia Bay, Argument in a Fiat, Argument in a transit van, Before the Storm spoilers, Calamastia, Canon Compliant, Canon Continuation, Cliffhangers, Declarations Of Love, Exploration, F/F, Higgs Boson joke, Mystery, Nightmares, No Dark Room, Post-Save Arcadia Bay Ending, Revelations, Secret Identity, Secrets, Time Travel, light stabbing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-04-27 14:46:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 35,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14427735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FortressCaulfield/pseuds/FortressCaulfield
Summary: In the wake of Chloe's sacrifice, Max Caulfield may finally find the answers she needs from the last person she suspects, but she may not like what she hears. If she can find the courage to face the truth, she may even find a way to change not just Chloe's fate, but that of everyone she's ever loved!My attempt to find a new ending, once and for all, and tie up as many lose ends as possible along the way from both the original game and Before the Storm!





	1. We'll Meet Again

Chapter 1; We'll Meet Again

Heard from someone you're still pretty  
And then they went on to say  
That the pearly gates  
Have some eloquent graffiti  
Like, "We'll meet again!"  
"Fuck the man!"  
"Tell my mother not to worry!"

-Iron and Wine, The Trapeze Swinger

 

**June 3rd, 1978**

In many ways, the worst part about living forever was that she always wound up staring at her own stupid, freckled, teenage face again. It was like the buzzer on a game show denoting a wrong answer; the jingle when Mario died; the wah-wah horn of her failure. And fail she had, or she wouldn't be here again, at the start of another loop. Standing halfway up the Arcadia Bay lighthouse stairs, looking out the high windows at the path down the hillside and at her own reflection in the glass.

She peered outside at the pathway between the trees, looking for movement. They were gone. They were always gone. She knew they would be. She had run after them dozens of times but never even caught sight of them. They were gone. Everything was gone. She was gone.

Why she still looked for them every time she would never quite understand. It was a habit she couldn't quite break, a tick she could never catch before she did it. Focusing back on her reflection she looked herself in the eye, "You were so close."

In the image in the window, brown eyes squinted back at her beneath a furrowed brow.

"Everything like before. No fucking around this time."

 

* * *

 

**October 22nd, 2013**

In many ways, the worst part about Chloe's death was that it was almost entirely eclipsed by Rachel's. In the end, Max had needed to do very little herself. Nathan Prescott was in police custody for less than an hour before he snapped and told them everything. The dark room, Rachel's overdose, Mark Jefferson. Max called in one anonymous tip about the location of Rachel's body and that was it. The rest took care of itself. It turns out there's a limit to what money can buy you, and it does not include getting away with the very-public murder of two teenage girls. Especially when one is the daughter of the District Attorney.

But for most of Arcadia Bay, Rachel's death was the one that mattered. She had been the perfect high school princess, killed as part of some perverted art project. Chloe had been a drop-out and a criminal who wound up as little more than another school shooting statistic; a footnote. Most of Blackwell only went to one funeral that weekend, and it wasn't the one Max attended. The girl with the blue hair who choose to sacrifice herself so they could all escape death by tornado was forgotten, and Max couldn't take it. She stopped attending classes. Stopped eating. Stopped responding when anyone tried to talk to her. After a few days and multiple requests from her friends, her parents came to collect her and took her back to Seattle.

A week later, she was still there. Ryan and Vanessa Caulfield had started to gently encourage their daughter to return to school or seek counseling, but how could she? The events of that week, the REAL events of that week, were now hers and hers alone to live with. Or without.

Max's mother had called her daughter four times before finally going up to Max's room and shaking her to get her attention. Max had been writing again. 'Her name was Chloe and she mattered!' over and over on a piece of paper. Vanessa forced herself not to look at it, and tried to sound chipper as she announced, "Max, you have a visitor!"

Max looked back and forth between her mother and her paper, reading her mother's pained expression and bracing for another argument about therapy. It took a moment for her to realize she'd been addressed, "A visitor?"

"Do you remember a Stephanie? From Arcadia Bay Elementary?" Max just stared blankly. She had long since run out of tears but her eyes were still red and sunken. Her thick, brown hair unwashed and only barely combed. She wore the same clothes day after day, a black t-shirt that used to belong to Chloe and whatever pair of jeans she first came to when she got out of bed. Vanessa Caulfield tried hard to hide her motherly concern and continued brightly, "I think she was a year ahead of you. In Ch-"

"In Chloe's class," interrupted Max.

"Why don't you come down and say hi?" offered Vanessa. The question hung for a minute in the still air before Max finally dragged herself to her feet.

"OK."

Max didn't really remember Steph Gingrich very well, so to say she looked different wasn't really accurate, but still, not quite what Max was expecting. Steph was small, even smaller than Max herself, sporting a buzz cut under ball cap with a green creature on it (A goblin? Max wasn't sure. Something like that.) and a black fleece pullover that hid any trace of her figure. Her features were traditionally pretty, but she had eschewed make-up as part of a seeming effort to downplay her femininity. While waiting for Max, Steph had been occupying her time with a small book. A script perhaps? She was making notes in the margins, but stopped when she noticed Max come down. She quickly stashed the pencil behind her ear and stood in greeting, "Hi, Max!"

"Hey?" offered Max, uncertainly turning the statement into a question.

"You probably don't remember me. Um, I had hair back then!" she lifted off her cap and ran her hand across her downy buzz. "I was in... I was in Chloe's class. Stephanie Gingrich? It's just Steph now."

"I think so," offered Max. "I didn't know too many people in Chloe's class." She made her way to the table and sank into the seat across from Steph. She could see the cover of the book now. It was a script after all. 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.'

"We knew you!" smiled Steph. "Well, we knew you and Chloe. Like, as a unit. Kind of like these two guys.", she patted the cover of the script. "Everybody thinks of them sort of collectively, even themselves. It becomes hard to imagine one without the other."

Max adopted a wry expression and gazed at Steph's hand on the script cover. "Yeah," was all she could manage to say.

"And a couple mutual friends were worried about you, so I wanted to come and see how you were doing," Steph reached across the table for Max's hand. Steph's eyes glanced at the white flame & lighter logo on Max's t-shirt. Firewalk. Slightly faded. Too big for Max. Was that Chloe's shirt? It did seem slightly familiar. "And maybe... I don't know. Swap some stories. Chloe was a good friend. It's hard to believe she's gone."

Max seemed to be still in something of a fog, a few sentences behind, "Mutual friends?"

"Dana and Juliet. We've been talking on social media after I couldn't make it down for the funerals."

"Funerals plural? You knew Rachel too?"

"We were friends, and ... well, to be honest, I had a huge crush on her. I'll even confess I got a little stalkery. There's not a lot I don't know about Rachel Amber!", Steph smiled wistfully and sighed.

"I only know her by ... reputation," Max muttered, looking down at the table. "What was she really like?"

Steph's brow knit and she smiled a melancholic smile, "Like a force of nature! I used to like to joke that the sun would come out when she smiled and the wind would roar when she was angry. Rachel Amber was like nobody else, Max!"

"Nobody else? People tell me we look alike."

"No.", said Steph flatly and immediately. "Sorry. Don't see it."

Max shrugged demurely. She'd never really seen the resemblance either, but then she only knew Rachel from photos. She was about to change the topic when she noticed Steph staring at her and tilting her head to the side. "Actually, Max, now that you mention it.", said Steph, leaning to view Max from different angles. "There is something. I can't quite put my finger on it."

Max squirmed under Steph's gaze and said, "It sounds like she meant a lot to you."

Steph nodded, "She did. I'll be honest, when she and Chloe first got together I'll admit I was super jealous..."

"Hella jealous?" suggested Max, with just a hint of a weary smile.

"Hella jealous," laughed Steph, "But, you know, those two were so good together, in the end it was hard to be anything but happy for them."

"Good together?" spat Max, rising suddenly from the table, "How can you say that? Rachel was..." she cut herself off. Her opinion of Rachel was not high. Rachel the cheater. Rachel the liar. Rachel the gold-digger. She huffed indignantly and pulled her lips tight. To be fair, all Max ever knew of Rachel was filtered through the lens of Chloe's anger. Max wondered if Rachel had a similar opinion of her. All Rachel would have known of Max Caulfield is that she's a terrible friend who abandoned Chloe when Chloe needed her most. Either way, she couldn't quite bring herself to recite the litany of Rachel's misdeeds at this time to a grieving friend. She was sorely tempted to do it anyway and rewind, just for the catharsis, but no. She sighed, "It didn't end well, Steph."

"Well of course it didn't!" shrugged the smaller girl, leaning back in her chair, "It was a high school romance! They had two good years together Max. Two GOOD years. TWO! Do you have any idea how rare that is? I haven't dated anyone for two MONTHS, let alone two years. Have you?"

Max slumped back into her chair by way of admitting that she had not. Steph continued, "Whatever came between them at the end doesn't erase what brought them together."

Max smiled weakly. Her own view of Rachel aside, it made Max glad that Rachel and Chloe had been happy together. "What brought you two together? You and Chloe I mean."

"She used to join our tabletop games sometimes," Steph said, tapping the green thing on her hat. Okay, so it WAS a goblin, and not some sports team mascot Max had missed. She noticed now there was text around the brim. 'We be Goblins, you be food!' "Chloe was a half-elf barbarian named Calamastia. She spent most of her time threatening everybody."

Max managed a smile, "That sounds like her."

Steph tilted her head wistfully, "She would keep getting killed over and over and I'd have to really jump through hoops to come up with ways to bring her back." That hit a little on the nose. Max just sat there with her mouth open, struggling for a reply.

Steph started awkwardly, "Um, anyway, it was a good time. One game we..." until she was suddenly cut off by Max saying, "What if you could do it for real?"

"What? Like, go all Parson Gotti inside a game world?"

Max shook her head. She didn't get the reference, but she knew it wasn't what she meant. "No, bring her back. Chloe. Or Rachel. Would you jump through the hoops?"

Steph sat back and adopted a concerned expression. The exact one Max was afraid she'd get from anyone if she tried to convince them of the truth, of her powers, of her adventures with Chloe in the week that never was. "Max..."

"I'm serious. Would you do it?"

"Gaming... the theater... my whole world is heroes and villains. If I had a chance to... BE the hero, for real? If I thought I could save Chloe and Rachel? If there was anything I could do for them but cry? Hell yeah, I'd do it. Of course I would. I'd never stop."

"What if it was hard? What if nothing went how you thought? What if other people got hurt because you kept fucking it up?" Max could feel herself started to get emotional and animated. She stood and paced as she spoke, "What if you didn't know what to do, and you broke everything over and over and you weren't even sure you could keep hold of your own sanity? What if you had to weigh the worth of one person's life against another?", Max turned while pacing and suddenly Steph was in front of her. She clasped Max by the shoulders.

"We love who we love, Max. Worth doesn't enter into it. And look, I'm a gamemaster. I believe in the struggle. If my players aren't bloody and broken even in victory then I haven't done my job," Steph was starting to mist up herself now. Max's sudden energy was infectious. "If it wasn't hard, it wouldn't be heroic."

 

* * *

 

**October 23rd, 2013**

The next morning, Max sat in her pajamas surrounded by upturned boxes and a scattered mass of old photos that used to be stored within. Her parents had both gone to work, so she was free to spread them around without worrying about interruption. She had maybe a hundred images, all from around the same time, and slowly inspected each in turn, rejecting them. She could feel her eyes start to go blurry, but she kept hunting. Each photo posed the same problem. If Max went back to warn Chloe, or Rachel, the tornado would come. Or something worse. She shuddered remembering Chloe in her wheelchair; the reality where she had been paralyzed as a direct result of Max's attempts to change history.

"If it wasn't hard, it wouldn't be heroic," She repeated to herself and finally one photo caught her eye. It was of Max herself, on her 14th birthday, holding up her freshly unwrapped, first-ever smartphone. Her first birthday after the move. Her first without Chloe.

"Maybe I can't save you, Chloe. But while I still have these powers, I'm going to use them for you, even if all I can do is the simplest thing... the thing I should have always done."

She inhaled through her nose and focused deep within the photo. The image began to flicker and pulsate. She could hear faint strains of her parents singing happy birthday, distant and echoey. She forced her way past the dull ringing that filled her ears, through the blurry glare that clouded her vision. Soon, she could almost taste the cake, smell the matches and candles. With a flash and a hum, the focus was complete, and the photo in her hand suddenly changed to a brand new iPhone 3 as Max was transported back in time once again.

 

* * *

 

**September 21st, 2009**

Somehow, it felt easier than before. Maybe whatever batteries her powers ran on had recharged after a week's disuse, maybe it was practice. Max rankled at the thought she was getting good at this.

Gathering her thoughts, Max gazed at the phone in her hand. Looking back, she realized her parents probably gave this to her specifically so she could keep in touch with Chloe long distance, but she never called. Not even once in 5 years. She had sent Chloe, what, maybe four texts with it? All excuses. Well, that was going to change!

Eagerly, Max activated the phone and began dialing. "Who are you calling, sweetie?" asked Max's father with a smile, from behind the camera. Max replied with only a grin, and then said into the phone, "Hi Joyce it's Max! May I please speak with Chloe? Ha ha! Yeah! It DOES feel like it's been years!"

 

* * *

 

**October 23rd, 2013**

They only spoke for about 15 minutes. Any longer and Max wasn't sure she could maintain the focus, and she couldn't imagine how confused poor Chloe would have been if Max had suddenly become a different person halfway through a conversation. They'd talked about school and friends, movies and music. Max told Chloe to say hi to Steph for her.

She'd had to ride the brakes hard to prevent herself giving Chloe some sort of warning of about the future. She wanted to, more than anything, but couldn't shake the fear it would somehow unleash the tornado again and Chloe's sacrifice would have been for nothing. After all, she was up against destiny here. Chloe had gone to meet her fate. For whatever reason, this is what the invisible hand on the wheel decreed must be, and to defy that had only brought pain and suffering.

For now, all Max wanted was new memories with her best friend. Surely the universe could give her that much without breaking, right? To make sure, she reached for her journal and flipped through. Not much seemed to have changed from what she remembered. There were fewer self-recriminating entries about being a bad friend and failing to stay in touch, but everything else was the same. Rachel, dead. Chloe, dead. Max, having to make the same awful choice on the lighthouse cliffs.

She supposed if she really had changed anything of consequence she would have been able to tell immediately, because when she got back she wouldn't have been still sitting in a ring of old photos trying to figure out the best way to contact Chloe.

Max wasn't sure whether or not to be relieved. On the one hand, she hadn't broken anything. On the other, she kind of wanted to. She hunted through her old photos for another good focus candidate. If she couldn't see Chloe in the future, she'd see her in the past. And the universe could suck it.

"You're an idiot, Maxine Caulfield," called the figure in the doorway. "Didn't you learn your lesson by now?"

Max whirled in shock, knocking over her stack of empty photo boxes. Framed in the doorway of her room was the figure of a woman, her posture weary and hunched.

"You keep doing this and you're going to wind up just like me," she said, approaching. Instinctively, Max threw up her right hand and clenched the part of her brain that engaged her rewind and... nothing! The woman continued to approach. Max's mind raced! Were her powers broken? Lost? Was she just rusty?

As if in answer, the stack of boxes suddenly flew up off the floor and arranged itself just as it had been before. The rewind was working, just not on the other woman! As she got close enough to light, Max could make out her features. Matted brown hair, shot through with gray. Weather-beaten skin, bruised neck, dirty sweatpants. The homeless woman from behind the Two Whales! Except now, she carried herself with a sense of purpose; sharper, more alert. Her voice had lost the tired country drawl Max remembered.

Max could only manage to stammer, "You! Why are you... how did you get in?"

The woman cocked her head to the side, "The door was unlocked."

Max glared, "No, it was locked! I locked it myself."

"You're not listening, kid," the older woman stopped and lowered herself awkwardly to the floor, sitting opposite Max. "It *was* unlocked. Now look, we've got a lot to get through. I'm sorry I didn't say something to you the other week, it's just... well, it took me a while to realize what was going on. This is the first time this has happened, you know."

Max's mind was racing a mile a minute, unsure what exact mix to feel of threatened and confused. The homeless woman had always seemed harmless, but that was behind the Two Whales. Now she had apparently followed Max home to Seattle and broken into her house and was talking nonsense. Max decided to play along for now and asked, "First time what happened?"

"You! This!" she replied, gesturing to the photos. "Time travel! Oh, don't be surprised. You and I have a lot in common. That's why you can't rewind me. I couldn't rewind you either." She offered Max a smile as she began to dig something out from her pocket. Max couldn't quite see, but it seemed to be some sort of plastic card. "I'm here to help you. I don't want to see you repeating my mistakes."

Max stared back at her, "Are you saying..." and stopped, looking the woman over. She had to admit, there were similarities. Shape of the face, the hair, the build. But differences as well. Her eyes were a different color. The nose was all wrong. Still, there was only one thing she could be driving at. "Are you implying you're an older version of me?"

"No," she replied and slid an old, faded, laminated card across the floor for Max to read.

Blackwell Academy Student ID  
Issued September 1, 2012  
Jane M. Caulfield  
Born February 9, 1996

"I'm actually slightly younger."

 

 

 


	2. All This Repitition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The mysterious homeless woman reveals her true identity! Max recruits a new ally in her quest to save Chloe Price!

Chapter 2; All This Repetition

Now, when all the clowns that you have commissioned  
Have died in battle or in vain  
And you're sick of all this repetition  
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane  
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane

-Bob Dylan, Queen Jane

 

**October 23rd, 2013**

Max Caulfield sat amid a vast spread of photos and switched her gaze back and forth between an ID card and the older homeless woman to whom it seemingly, inexplicably, belonged:

Blackwell Academy Student ID  
Issued September 1, 2012  
Jane M. Caulfield  
Born February 9, 1996

Even through the cracked and yellowed laminate, the photo looked eerily similar to Max, aside from an expression more confident than Max had ever felt in her life. No, not confident. Defiant! Jane, teenage Jane, in the photo, wore her hair short and shapely. It gave her a professional air that made her look older. The two girls were not identical, but if Max showed this photo to anyone and claimed it was her sister, they would have no reason to doubt it. There wasn't much left of the crisp, tidy teenager in the disheveled and bent homeless woman who sat across from her, but the resemblance was still there, anchored by those same stern, defiant, brown eyes.

"Jane?"

"Jane."

"M?"

"Maxine. Dad always loved that name. Never liked it myself."

"Dad?"

"My Dad. Your Dad."

"My Dad?"

" _Our_  Dad. Ryan Caulfield," Jane raised a hand and pointed to the family photo on Max's desk. "Don't like the beard. He didn't have it in my reality." Max's gaze followed the gesture as a look of incredulity spread over her face. She regarded the photo; herself and her parents at Snoqualmie Falls, and tried to remember her father without a beard. She knew he didn't grow it until she was five or so, but for the life of her she couldn't quite conjure the image, and somehow, that was the sticking point for her. Half-sister doppelganger from another universe? Sure! Dad with no beard? Crazy-talk!

Max's eyes drifted to the third face in the photo; her mother, prompting her to ask, "And Mom?"

"Different Mom. See, I was like you once. Young and dumb. Full of power and looking for any excuse to use it. Yes, the exact same power as you. Well, almost. My thing was doors, not photos. I don't know how you do the photo thing."

"Well, that makes two of us," admitted Max. She knew how to perform a photo focus, but she had no understanding of the mechanics behind it. She suddenly felt very under-prepared to be talking to Jane, like she hadn't studied for an important test.

"More like one and a half of us, but yeah," said Jane with a squint, "My thing is doors. I can open a door and step through it to any time on the other side."

Max butted in eagerly, "Wait, if I go back through a photo, I just take over the body of younger me at that time. If you go back through a door... are there... two of you?"

"Then what happens when you get back? You have to jump back into your other self with no idea what she's been up to? That's weird. I wouldn't like that. Seems like a hell of a weakness. Anyway, yes. There would be two of me. I've met myself a bunch of times. It is no big deal. Back to the Future was wrong," Jane made a dismissive hand-wave and continued, "Using the same trick, I can also open any door at any time, as long as it was unlocked at some point."

"Oh! OH! So the door  _was_  unlocked!" Max exclaimed, finally feeling a little less hopelessly lost.

"There's hope for you yet, Max," Jane said, her cragged face making something between a grin and a sneer. "In my reality... the original realty... Ryan Caulfield married my mother, Katie Fisher, and had me. In yours, he marries your mom, and has you."

Max looked down at her hands and then at Jane's. So, not the same person, but apparently close enough for whatever's in charge of handing out time powers. "Okay, so, what happened? I mean, what caused the change?"

Jane adopted a pained tone and stared at the floor just in front of Max as she spoke, "I did. My mother had a twin sister, for whom I am named. Aunt Jane! God, Aunt Jane! How much did I used to hear about her?" Something approaching a smile crossed Jane's face as she reminisced, until she suddenly remembered Max was there. When she did, Max thought she saw just the faintest flicker of anger cross the older woman's face before she continued, "In the original reality, she died when they were 9 years old, running around the observation deck of the Arcadia Bay lighthouse when part of the railing gave way. My mother never really recovered from her twin's death. She refused to leave Arcadia Bay, even years later when Dad got a good job offer in Seattle, so my family never moved away like yours did. As I grew up, and started to resemble her dead sister, my mother's sanity took a turn for the worse. It was hard on us. Hard on Dad. She was in and out of institutions. We had to put her on suicide watch more than once."

Max's mind swam with questions. Were Jane and Chloe friends? What happened to Chloe in Jane's world? Had they stayed in touch since there was no move to Seattle? What else was different? What became of the alternate version of her own mother? Did she have more than one time-tossed half sibling out there? For the moment, she forced herself to stay focused on Jane's story. She gave a grim nod by way of acknowledgement.

"So, what's a gal with time powers to do? I walked through the lighthouse door and time-traveled to that very day in 1978 and then I just locked it so they couldn't get in. I watched from a window as my mother and her sister, the 9 year old versions of them, came to the door, tried to get in and eventually gave up and went away. Once they were gone, I tried to go back to my own time, and I got there and discovered my whole family was gone. With her sister alive, my mother went to school out of state. My dad married someone else. I'm never born. You take my place and all of you move to Seattle. All I found was an empty house."

Max's brows knit into a concerned expression. "I'm so sorry!" she offered, "That sounds awful!"

"I'm not telling you this for sympathy, kid!" snapped Jane, "This is for your benefit, not mine!"

Max nodded. She fished for an intelligent question she could ask to prove she was paying attention "You said this is the first time this had happened. Me developing powers. What did you mean first time?"

"Ugh. The first loop.", said Jane, wearily "Ever since I erased myself from history, time, it seems doesn't quite know what to do with me. I live in loops. I go through my life and I die and I wake right back up again in the body of my 17 year old self in 1978, just after I had set that change in stone. Right at the very second that saving my aunt's life became irrevocable. The instant I had negated my own birth."

Max just sat and listened, wide-eyed. She remembered being horrified to find how different her other self had turned out after the trip back in time to save William Price; in the reality where Chloe was paralyzed and Max herself was a Vortex Club member. She supposed it could have gone much worse.

Jane continued, "You name it, I've lived it. I've been a doctor, a soldier, a senator. I've been a gang leader and a grandmother. It turns out you can make a pretty comfortable living out of knowing everything that's going to happen."

"You really have lived in Arcadia Bay for a thousand years!"

"I told you!" nodded Jane, "I never said they were consecutive!"

Max asked, "But why be homeless? I mean, if you can make any life you want?"

"Why not? I'm basically numb to it all by now, and making a life gets old after the 20th or 30th time. Last dozen lives or so I spend most of my time vegging out in alleys depending on the kindness of people like Joyce Price. Why bother doing anything more? What's the point?"

Max stood and stared out the window as she absorbed this. Outside there blew a cold breeze, and the fall leaves were starting to come down. She could feel the chill of the air through the window. "Okay, I get it. I do. You're here to scare me. You don't want me using my powers and messing things up. Well, you didn't need to come. I'm already scared! I don't want these powers. I don't want to have to be the one who chooses! I swear to Dog, if I could just give them away I would do it, in a heartbeat! But I lost my best friend, my...my Chloe and I don't know what to do! I tried as hard as I could to help her escape her destiny..."

"Destiny?" Jane asked, her thin lips pulled into a smirk.

"Her fate! It wanted her dead, and each time I saved her I just broke things more and more!"

"That's cute, Max. You don't believe in God, but you believe in destiny? What's the difference? You're okay with the idea of an all-powerful, over-riding will controlling everything, but not if it has a beard?" Jane sneered, rising awkwardly to her feet.

Max flopped dejectedly onto her bed, unsure how to take this rebuke. Jane advanced on her, "It can feel good to shrug off our failings as the will of fate or an act of God, but that's bullshit! I had to live with this a long, long time, so let me tell you, what happened to me is 100% my own fault. I own that. There is no destiny, no fate, no hand on the wheel! Nothing is meant to happen, it can only be  _made_  to happen!"

"So it is all my fault!" Max's voice quavered as tears started running down her face, "If it's not fate then it's all on me. I was too stupid! I did it all wrong and I killed my friend! I've lost her forever and I'm to blame!"

Max broke, crying like a child; a deep, stabbing anguish belting out of her in heavy, bursting sobs. Jane sat down next to her on the bed, not looking at Max but staring darkly, straight ahead, "Hard lesson, isn't it? But at least it stops you making a worse mistake later on."

Jane stayed until Max had exhausted her tears, but she never once made contact as Max bawled. No shoulder, no comfort. "Max, look... I'll think about it, okay? I'll see if I can figure a way, a safe way, to save your friend."

Max looked up at her hopefully.

"It won't be easy," Jane cautioned, "And whatever I come up with, you'll need to do exactly as I say. Can you do that?"

Max nodded enthusiastically as Jane stood over her, chin held high, eyes angled low. Without another word, Jane turned and walked to the door, picking her way between Max's scattered photos across the floor. Max called out as Jane reached the doorway, "Wait! Did you want to see him? Dad I mean. Before you go. I could tell him you're ... a teacher! From Blackwell! A history teacher, or something, and you could..."

A stormy scowl passed over Jane's features. "Max, I think... I think you mean that to be kind but, no. Seeing someone you love and they don't know who you are. You can't imagine how much that hurts."

 

* * *

 

**October 24th, 2013**

Steph Gingrich never cared much for fall, but even she had to admit that fall on the University of Washington campus was pretty spectacular. The close buildings of the central quad protected the cherry trees from the wind, so they maintained their dazzling orange foliage even as most other trees in the area were blowing bare. The ring of vivid colors pressed up against the buildings reminded her of Rachel Amber and the Arcadia Bay forest fire of 2010. Steph had come to expect that little tinge of nostalgia each time she left her Physics class.

The other thing in the quad that reminded her of Rachel Amber; the one she was not expecting; was a red flannel shirt, worn by one Max Caulfield. Max looked better than yesterday. The bags under her eyes said she hadn't slept much, but she had at least washed and brushed her hair, and her hoodie and jeans looked clean. She waved energetically to get Steph's attention, "Hi Steph!"

"Max! Good to see you out in the world! Am I going crazy or is that Rachel's shirt?"

Max nodded solemnly, "That's a long story. Steph, I'd like to tell you everything. About that week. About me and Chloe and Rachel.", Max said, looking her right in the eyes, "And you're going to think I'm totally batshit insane, but I've prepared a little proof I think you'll find very compelling."

Steph began walking down the quad and gestured with her head for Max to follow. She wrapped a red and white checked scarf around her neck, obscuring a well-worn black t-shirt adorned with a pink triangle and thin white letters reading, 'HBH. Don't Assume!' She zipped her faux leather jacket over top of it, jammed her hands in her pockets and nodded for Max to continue.

And Max did. As they walked, she told Steph about her rewind power, her trips through time, and the week that never was. Her adventures with Chloe, and how they used Max's abilities to unearth the truth about Rachel. The visions, the tornado, the snow, the twin moons and finally the ultimate cruel choice Max was forced to make on the lighthouse cliff. Steph listened throughout, but made no sound, save the steady clop of her boots on the concrete as they walked, her expression growing steadily darker with each new revelation.

Steph stopped and stood in front of Max. With a concerned expression, she told her, "Max... look, I can tell this means a lot to you, but just because I'm into fantasy doesn't mean I'm gonna swallow this sort of thing."

Steph hadn't noticed that Max had taken out her journal. With a sheepish expression, Max opened the journal and already written on the page she selected were Steph's exact words, ' _Max... look, I can tell this means a lot to you, but just because I'm into fantasy doesn't mean I'm gonna swallow this sort of thing._ '

Steph paused. "Okay, that's a cute trick, but you could have just written a bunch of answers and, you know, turned to the one I said."

Max flipped the page. The next entry read, ' _Okay, that's a cute trick, but you could have just written a bunch of answers and, you know, turned to the one I said._ '

Steph paused again, then defiantly crossed her arms and said the most random thing she could think of, "For thine is. Life is. For thine is the. This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends..."

Max flipped the page. ' _Not with a bang but with a whimper,'_  read the next sheet.

Steph stared at the page for a long time, uncertainty and doubt playing over her face, fishing for another explanation. "Let me see that!" she said, taking the journal from Max and flipping through it to try and discover the method behind the trick, "So you're saying... you knew what I was going to say... because you replayed it?"

Max nodded, "This is the fourth time we've had this conversation. I wrote down what you said and rewound. I have no reason to trick you Steph, and I need someone I can talk to about this. Did you hear how the police found Rachel's body?"

"Anonymous ... tip..." said Steph, slowly piecing things together, "That was you?"

Max nodded. "How else would I know? I was here, in Seattle when ... when it happened. And Nathan would never tell me. He hates me."

Steph looked back and forth between Max and her own words in Max's journal. "Max, why do you have Rachel's shirt?"

"She left it at Chloe's. In that other timeline, Chloe gave it to me. In this one, Joyce let me take anything I wanted from Chloe's room after the funeral. I took this and a few other things."

Steph handed the journal back, a skeptical look still clouding her face, "You wore it because you knew I'd recognize it?"

Max shrugged, "I suppose I should have figured you would, but no, I wore it because it was clean and warm. I haven't been great about keeping up with laundry."

Steph laughed, "Did you know I gave it to Rachel? She told me she liked it the first time I wore it. When her birthday came up 2 weeks later, I knew it was either use that excuse to give her the shirt or I'd end up wearing it, like, every day, to try and impress her. I thought the former was marginally less pathetic."

Max smiled and hugged her arms, "It's like we're the sisterhood of the traveling shirt!" That the red flannel had passed through all four of their hands certainly seemed to suggest that telling Steph the truth was the right thing to do. From Steph to Rachel to Chloe to Max and now back to Steph again. It seemed like... well, yesterday she'd have used the word destiny. Kismet, maybe?

"Max, why tell me of all this?"

"I let Chloe go. I let her sacrifice herself so the town would be spared from the tornado. I thought that was her destiny. But now I can't stop wondering, what if I'm wrong? What if there IS no destiny? But I don't have any confidence I can figure it out alone. I need someone who's smart. A planner. Someone who can think of all the angles."

"And you think I can... what? Save Chloe?"

"Save Chloe. Save Rachel."

"Save the world?"

"Yes! Well, maybe not the world. Maybe just the town. Are you in?"

"Max..." Steph pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. For a minute she weighed Max and her story. It certainly sounded crazy, but how else could Max have done the trick with the journal? And if she did have that kind of power what in the world did Max need her for? "I have another class. Look, if you want, you can hang in the library and after class I can drive you home, okay?"

Max nodded resignedly. "You don't believe me. Okay.", she sighed, and turned to go. After two steps, she called back, "Yo, Stephers, you got, like, any more copies of Bladerunner?"

Steph blinked at the non-sequitur and the strange nickname, "What? No, I don't do that any more. All my Dad's equipment is back in Arcadia Bay. I had some leftovers, but I sold my last one two weeks ago. What, did Chloe tell you about that?"

Max just smiled knowingly and walked away. Steph shook her head and turned and walked into the Padelford building. Truth be told her next class wasn't even here. She had just ducked into the nearest available random building since she couldn't think of a better excuse to separate from Max. Even a two-time veteran of the Fortress of Insanity campaign could only take so much crazy at once! She was wondering if she should text Juliet and Dana about Max's mental state when she was approached by a classmate from her Shakespearean Studies class. She didn't know his name off the top of her head, but he apparently knew her by reputation and asked, "Yo, Stephers, you got, like, any more copies of Bladerunner?"

At a sprint, Steph turned and ran out of the building to catch up with Max, who was walking slowly in the direction of the student parking lot. When she reached Max, Steph huffed between breaths, "Okay, so I'll play along for now, but I reserve the right to claim I never believed you if this all turns out to be bullshit!"

"I thought you had a class," said Max, coyly.

"If this is going where I think it's going, then somehow I feel like me cutting class today isn't going to matter all that much."

 

* * *

 

Fifty-seven minutes later, over four slices of pizza in the most private booth they could find, Max retold her entire story and this time, Steph took detailed notes. "Damn, Max. Okay, so you want me to try and figure out what you do to fix this? Save Chloe, avoid the tornado. Right? Am I following?"

"Yes. At the time, I thought the tornado was because I defied fate by saving Chloe. Now I'm not so sure."

"Did you think about just, like, warning people? I mean, if people took shelter, you know? The school has all those sturdy, old, brick buildings that... certainly... you're shaking your head at me."

"That was my immediate regret; not warning people. But this storm.", Max shuddered, recalling the horror of it; from the first time she glimpsed it in her premonitions to the final moment on the cliffs, she had this awful sense the damn thing was out to get her. "It was biblical, Steph! Beyond reason. Even if I could find a way to warn everyone and they believed me there's no way that storm doesn't kill people and destroy the town anyway."

"That bad?" Steph raised a quizzical eyebrow.

"It was the size of a mountain. There was a ... malice to it. Chloe called it Rachel's Revenge."

Steph sat bolt upright, "Max, what if it  _was_? Okay, I know I'm playing catch-up here, but hear me out. We used to joke that Rachel was a force of nature. Not long after she moved here she didn't get the part she wanted in our production of A Doll's House and we had just awful weather for weeks afterward. It was an outdoor show and they had to cancel every single performance due to rain. Once, after a fight with Chloe I saw her scream in anger and the wind kicked up and blew all the leaves off the trees! And there was this insane forest fire and nobody could figure out what started it, but that whole week she was having this massive fight with her dad. You're telling me about snow and tornadoes, but we had fucked up weather in Arcadia Bay before you came back. At the time, I didn't really think about it, but now you're sitting here telling me superpowers are real, so, what the fuck, right? In for a penny and all that."

"You're saying Rachel wanted to destroy the town?" Max had difficulty picturing that. Rachel had been so perfect and popular. Max couldn't quite wrap her brain around the idea that someone would have that and want to throw it all away.

"I don't know. Maybe. Or maybe somehow after she died, all that power had to go somewhere. Maybe it got stirred up by your investigation, or what was happening with your own power. I don't know. But honestly, the idea of super-powered Rachel... it kinda clicks. And I think I know what it is about you that reminds people of Rachel," Steph leaned low across the table in a conspiratorial way, "With both of you, there's this feeling, like you know something the rest of us don't."

"Okay, so if the storm  _is_  Rachel... or like, what's left of her, why would it go away when Chloe died and why only specifically when she died in the bathroom on Monday, but not when Jefferson shot her Thursday night?"

Steph smiled and tilted her head sideways, "Aww Max, I thought you were a romantic! Maybe Chloe is like, the anchor. Maybe she was the last person in Arcadia Bay that Rachel really cared about, and without that anchor...", Steph wiggled her fingers and moved her hand through the air, miming evaporation. "But come Thursday night, things were already too far along to stop."

Max reached across the table and grasped Steph's hands, "Holy shit, Steph, you're good at this!"

"Gamemasters. We can make a story out of anything!"

Max dropped Steph's hands and her shoulders slumped in disappointment, "So you don't believe any of what you just said?"

"I told you, Max, I'm playing along. Your proof of your own ... power... thing... whatever, that was very convincing, but I'm taking your word that there even was a tornado, or any of this other stuff! I've got no way of knowing if I'm right about Rachel or your storm. What happened when you tried to save Rachel? Did the storm still come?"

Max really didn't want to have to answer that question out loud. It wasn't even Steph's reaction she was afraid of. She was ashamed. "I don't know", she said quietly to the table. "I never tried."

Steph leapt to her feet and batted their drinks off the table. "YOU NEVER TRIED?" she cried, "You never tried to save Rachel? What the fuck, Max?" The crashing plastic tumblers and scattered ice drew the attention of the whole restaurant. Max closed her eyes, reached out her hand and hit rewind.

"What happened when you tried to save Rachel? Did the storm still happen?"

Max raised her eyes to meet Steph's, "How, Steph? You tell me how and I'll do it. I'm not smart. I'm a coward. I don't know what I'm doing. Rachel wasn't my friend. I don't know her. I don't have photos of her. If I went back and like, warned her, would she listen?"

"No. Rachel wasn't one for warnings." Steph stewed, "Okay, let me try and understand how this photo thing works. Are there any limitations?"

Max shook her head, "I don't think it works with screens. It has to be a physical image.", and she patted the lump of her camera in her satchel. Feeling its weight in her hands again, it occurred to Max she hadn't taken a single photo since Chloe's death. Not so much as a selfie. She opened the bag to look at it and was struck how strange it was to have her old camera back. Since the events of that week were aborted, her camera was never smashed, and Chloe never gave her William's camera to replace it. She smirked at the clunky, old thing. At least one thing had benefited from all this time travel bullshit.

"Okay," Steph pondered, "Does it have to be a photo of you? I was around the night of that party. Maybe I could find an excuse to pull her aside."

"I think it has to be me. If I stare at a photo of me I can feel a sort of... pull. I don't get that with photos of other people."

Steph nodded, "Makes sense. Or I guess as much sense as any of this makes. Okay, so Rachel won't listen to you, and even if she would listen to me, we can't send me back. I'm trying to remember what else was going on in town that night. Maybe we could buy her and Chloe tickets to a show or something?"

Max suddenly slapped the table with both hands, "Three thousand dollars!"

"Oh I see," smirked Steph, "Here we go. Sorry, Max! The Nigerian prince was way more convincing..."

"No, I mean Chloe and Rachel needed money to leave town. If we can get that money to them at the right time, they'll both be out of harm's way! And I think I know where I can get some, but it's on campus and I'm in Seattle all that time."

"I'm on campus at that time."

"Do you think you could write me something to say that would convince your younger self to break into the principal's office, steal the handicapped fund and give it away to Rachel Amber?"

"Max, do I seem like the kind of girl who does her own dirty work?" Steph grinned, "Why would I, when I have a certain blue-haired punk to do it for me?"

Max laughed, "Yes! Yes! Chloe would jump at the chance to steal that money! All we have to do is figure out how to get her that information, and when to go back to. It would have to be a time when they were both still serious about leaving. Come to my house and help me find a photo?"

"Max, I still haven't decided if you're crazy, but if you are, it's the best kind of crazy! Let's go!"

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3; Into Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max and Steph and Jane go on a road trip in search of answers.
> 
> I'm sure everything will work out juuuuust fiiiiiine...

Chapter 3; Into Me

And you made your mark on me  
Like lovers carve their name on a tree  
And here I hand you my bare heart  
Where you carved your piece of art  
Into me

-Anna/Kate, Head on Vacation

**October 24, 2013**

"Is that the lady from the Two Whales?" asked Steph. She had driven Max home in search of the perfect photo to enact their plan to save Rachel & Chloe, and when they arrived they found an older homeless woman waiting for them on the steps. Seeing Jane again was somehow startling for Max. She had spoken with her just the day before, at length. She had taken Jane's words to heart. Well, selectively, maybe, but she had listened. She had spent most of the night and all the following day thinking about Jane, and yet somehow being reminded that her time-lost half-sister doppelganger actually existed in the flesh was a bit of a shock to the senses.

"Better let me talk to her," Max said, and climbed out of Steph's little Fiat. She approached Jane with a sense of trepidation, but rather than bringing warnings of doom, this time her older counterpart seemed to be enthusiastic; downright eager, almost.

"Max I have an answer for you! Ever since I fell outside of time, I can't go back further than the start of my loops, but maybe you can! Your friend, with the blue hair? She was alive in my world! I wasn't close with her like you were, but there was no shooting, and that teacher of yours, the killer? He wasn't there. If you can restore that timeline..."

"With no Jefferson around, none of this would happen," said Max, putting her fingertips thoughtfully to her lips, "And Rachel was okay too?"

Jane nodded, "No killer teacher, no overdose!" She clasped Max's hands in her own. Jane's hands felt worn and hard; Metal wrapped in leather. "We can do this, Max! Do you know if you can access a dead reality?"

Max didn't reply. She was struggling to work out the tangled webs of causality in her head. Jane's promise of a Blackwell without Jefferson was very tempting. It certainly seemed cleaner than her own plan. Looking back, she saw Steph watching her intently from behind the steering wheel. She thought of Steph's description of Rachel and Chloe as a happy couple over the years she was away. She couldn't help picturing them in her head having finally escaped Arcadia Bay. She could almost see the two of them on the Santa Monica pier, gorging on food truck food, smoking up, looking at the moon shining on the waves. She remembered Chloe dancing on her bed, blue hair and waving arms amid a swirl of smoke and snark. That was the Chloe she wanted to save. Her Chloe. And Steph's Rachel.

"Jane, I'm sorry, I'm honored you thought about me, but..." Max said, as Jane's expression clouded over, "Steph and I already have a plan."

Jane froze. She jerked her hands back and walked past Max to stare daggers at Steph in the car. "Steph? Who the hell is Steph?"

"She's from Blackwell and..."

"Oh yes, the gamer," said Jane, peering at the smaller girl in the car before whirling on Max, "Tell me, how many centuries of time travel experience does she have? I'm gonna go ahead and guess... zero?"

"I know, I know! This is exactly what you warned me about! But we've got a good plan this time. We'll be careful."

Jane didn't seem to like this idea. She looked back and forth between Steph and Max with narrowed eyes. "You'll be careful? You'll be careful? Okay, Max, let's get in the car. There's something you and your little sidekick need to see."

 

* * *

 

Jane navigated as Steph drove; Max stuck in the back by herself. For about an hour, their route took them southeast on US 90 into the mountains, until Jane had them turn off onto a narrow, winding mountain road. They followed that for a while before Jane had them turn off on a smaller, unmarked track, and then another, and another. Max hoped Steph knew how to get back, as she felt herself grow lost in the maze of low ferns and mossy pines. Cloying cloud cover brought a premature darkness to the afternoon, but Max expected that; the clouds always hung low over these hills.

"Okay, I'm going to ask one more time. Where the heck are we going?" asked Steph, turning sharply around yet another switchback in the endless sea of green.

"And I'm going to answer one more time, you'll just have to see it for yourselves. If I try to explain it won't have the same impact," retorted Jane.

"You're not just luring us out into the woods to kill us both, right?" grinned Steph.

"Don't be stupid," replied Jane, flatly, "I barely even know who you are, and if I wanted Max dead I had the perfect opportunity yesterday. Didn't I, Max?"

Max nodded in grim agreement, then realized she was in the back seat and they couldn't see her. "Um, yes. I guess," she admitted, "Still, Jane, like, maybe a hint what we're doing out here would be nice, especially since we'll probably lose signal soon and I want to let my folks know when to expect me." Max glanced down at her phone, flickering between one and two bars.

Jane made eye contact with Max in the rear view mirror, "I thought you wanted to change the world. Now you're worried about curfew?"

Max started to respond when Jane cut her off, "Max, there's a big flaw in your plan. If you get your two friends out of harm's way, that just means what happened to them will happen to someone else. Instead of Rachel Amber missing posters everywhere, you'll have them for, I don't know ... the cheerleader, or the church mouse, or the photo snob."

"Shit! Fuck! I didn't think of that!" said Max, recalling the image of Victoria, bound and helpless on the dark room floor after Max had tried to warn her; about the wrong person, as it turned out. That timeline had been changed, but Max still felt guilty about it anyway.

"Did you think of that?" Jane asked Steph, pointedly.

"I did," Steph admitted.

"What?" asked Max in surprise.

"I figured that might happen. I mean, I'd hope it wouldn't, but..."

Max tilted her head so she could see Steph's eyes in the rear view. Victoria was... Victoria, but nobody deserved that. The goal here was to save everybody. Having to choose who lives and who dies was exactly what Max had been trying to avoid. She snapped at Steph, "But you were willing to trade someone for Rachel and Chloe?"

"Yes, of course I was!" said Steph, returning Max's gaze in the mirror.

"What? Steph, I thought... I thought you were better than that," Max said. "Better than me.", she thought, slumping into her seat, arms crossed.

"You look me in the eyes and tell me you wouldn't trade Victoria for Chloe, Max," said Steph, in a hurt tone.

Max bit her tongue. She had come within inches of trading an entire town for Chloe. Since Chloe's funeral there had been many late nights clutching a certain blue butterfly photo, imagining the possibilities if she had made the other choice on the lighthouse cliffs; holding the photo to her chest, unable to look at it for fear she wouldn't be able to resist focusing into it. She recalled telling herself long ago she would miss Chloe more than all the rest of Arcadia Bay put together and that was doubly true now that Chloe was dead. So, yeah, inches.

The guilt played over Max's face as Steph continued, "If you're not willing to do that, I don't know what else to suggest. The only other way I can see to completely fix this would be to go back and kill Jefferson."

"Kill him? Steph, I couldn't do that! I don't want to hurt anyone, let alone kill them!" in exasperation, Max leaned forward, her head between the two front seats, "You can't treat this like a game!"

"I'm treating this like I want my friends to be alive!" snapped Steph, defensively. Turning her head to see the scowl spread over Steph's face, Max knew she had gone too far. She lifted her right hand up to rewind when suddenly Jane reached over and swatted her hand.

"Not in a moving car, you idiot!" she scolded.

"Did... did you just try to rewind me yelling at you?" asked Steph, incensed.

Max sank into the backseat and looked back and forth between Jane and Steph. "I'm sorry, Steph. I said something stupid and... I'm sorry. You're right, I shouldn't take the cowards way out when I'm an asshole."

Max looked down at her hands. There were times she felt her power helped her in social situations; never her natural strong suit, but maybe using them to cover up her mistakes was just making her a terrible person. "I just meant... I don't think I have it in me to be an executioner, even for an evil prick like Mark Jefferson. Even knowing all the suffering his death would prevent. It's one thing to say it, but it's so  _so_  different to have to do it for real."

"It's never going to be real for me, Max!" responded Steph, still angry, "Even if I believe every word you say about time travel and tornadoes, this is all just theory as far as I'm concerned. I mean, if you changed something, would I even know it? What would happen to me?"

Jane spoke quietly, without turning to look at the younger girls, "This would become a dead reality. You would cease to exist."

Steph replied, "What?"

Jane looked at her sideways, "You. Cease."

"I mean what's a dead reality?"

Jane grunted in frustration, "It's a reality, a timeline, that a time traveler has left to go back to make a change. Whenever we do that, one reality comes to an end and another is spawned. Everybody in the old reality would cease to be the moment the time traveler left. There'd be a new version of them in the new reality and they would never know what happened."

"She asked if I could go there. To a dead reality," Max explained to Steph.

"It's possible in theory," continued Jane, "To a time traveler, is a past that's part of one timeline any more gone than a past that's part of another? That little strip of time, it still exists! We can get back there."

"Even though it didn't happen?" asked Steph.

Jane countered, "It happened. It may not be part of the timeline we're on, but it happened. Like the reality with Max's tornado. She was there. I was there. She warned me about it and I got in my van and left, but I could see it from up in Forest Hills. It happened. We were there. Weren't we, Max? Why couldn't we go back?"

Max was definitely not ready to be called on. She felt like she was only grasping about half of this, and she most definitely didn't want to have to face that tornado again. "I'm not following," she admitted.

"Let's say you have a reality where you don't like something. Maybe a friend got seriously hurt in an accident. Maybe it was your fault. Something like that," Jane eyes flicked accusingly at Max in the rear-view mirror. Max shrank away. "So you leave that reality to prevent the accident; change it back. That piece of time you just left, it  _ends_ , but it doesn't go away. In theory you could still travel back there if you wanted."

"So when you create an alternate future, you leave behind an alternate past. But it would only exist up to the point you left," mused Steph.

Jane nodded, "I can see why you like this one, Max. Smart. Pays attention. Doesn't get lost in her own damn head all the time. Yes, unless you stop the time traveler from leaving, that reality would still end right when they leave. And anybody there would cease to be." Max ignored the implied rebuke. If what Jane was saying was true, that meant the reality where Chloe had been paralyzed had ended the moment Max left it to revert her change, so there would be no version of William and Joyce who would find their euthanized daughter's body in the morning. For some reason, Max found this profoundly comforting.

Steph asked Jane, "Have you done it? Been to a dead reality?"

"No. Maybe I could have, before I broke my power, but I didn't try."

"Have you?" Steph asked Max, who was relieved to find Steph's anger with her seemed to have passed. Give a gamer a new rule to chew on and they're happy, she supposed. Although it had been a bumpy ride (before, figuratively, and now, literally, as the paved roads gave way to dirt and gravel tracks) Max was glad she had opened up to Steph. If anybody could wrap their brain around the intricacies of time travel, it would be her!

"I don't know," Max answered, "I don't think so. Maybe. I did a lot of changing things and then changing them back."

Steph stopped the car abruptly. The winding mountain road Jane had them following suddenly came to a dead end. There was enough room to turn around, and otherwise just a concrete wall in the side of the mountain, broken by a plain door and a rolling garage door. Both were rusted from disuse and neither bore any kind of sign or writing. It all looked aggressively, deliberately nondescript. Very utilitarian, like it might lead to a sewer or a maintenance tunnel of some kind.

Getting out of the car, Jane explained, "In some of my loops, early on, I went looking for answers about my power. Where it comes from. Who else might have it. That kind of thing. In the 90's, I found a group. One scientist and a small collection of amateur researchers. They were convinced supernatural abilities were real, and they were developing ways to find people who had them."

She walked to the door and leaned against it, laying both hands flat and closing her eyes. Even knowing what Jane could do, Max was skeptical that rusted door would ever open again. It looked more like Jane was trying to physically move the mountain, and it seemed to Max like she might at least have even odds. There was an immovability to Jane; an ancient will, steadfast and weighty. The mountain seemed a good match for her.

Jane continued, "In this reality, as in most, it all ended up going nowhere. They ran out of funding almost immediately and disbanded. Except in a couple loops where I volunteered as a test case. Then! Then we learned a thing or two!"

Max could feel Jane sifting the door through time. It gave her the impression of someone flipping through a photo album; different times flickering by. When Jane found a time the door was unlocked, she pulled the handle and the door creaked open. There was a sucking sound, a rush of air like Jane had ripped open a membrane into a vacuum chamber. The air inside smelled thick and close, choked of mildew and dust. Jane started down the bare concrete stairs, seemingly unconcerned about the darkness. Max hung in the doorway, shining her phone's light down the stair.

Steph stared nervously at the door into the mountain. "Well, Gingrich, you always wanted to go dungeoneering for real. Now's your chance!" After another moment's hesitation she dug the tire iron out of the back of her car. Feeling its reassuring heft in her hand, she approached the door.

Max stood in front of her, "Steph, I'm sorry I snapped at you, and I'm sorry I tried to rewind to fix it. All this craziness... it can't be easy for you."

"Max, if all this craziness turns out to be real and we can save our friends, then it's all worth it. And ... if it isn't, and all I'm doing here is helping you work through what you gotta work through... then that's worth it too," Steph blushed as suddenly Max was hugging her. She buried her face in Max's shoulder and inhaled. "This shirt still smells like Rachel," she said softly to herself. Max held her with one hand on the back of her head and was surprised by the softness of Steph's downy buzz cut. She rubbed it absentmindedly as Steph breathed in the familiar scent. "I miss her, Max. More than I thought I would."

Max held the smaller girl and looked out over the pine-covered hills. The clouds were sinking down into the valleys. Rain was coming.

"Come on, Steph, let's get down there and see what we can find."


	4. Stuck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max and Steph's exploration of the sinister abandoned research facility is cut short by an unexpected development, and just when they were getting to the good stuff!

Chapter 4; Stuck

Stuck on this dead end street  
Where all the new kids come to play  
Stuck where past and future meet  
Watching all our autumns drift away  
I just wanna die anywhere else  
Anywhere. Just not here.

-Die anywhere else, Night in the Woods

 

**October 24, 2013**

Steph and Max tiptoed down the bare concrete steps into the shuttered facility, holding onto each other to avoid having to touch the walls, which were soggy with condensation and patches of mold. The stairs went down about a half-flight into a larger open area. Their phone flashlights only carried so far, not much of a match for the depth of shadow inside the mountain. A glint at knee-level caught Steph's eye.

"There's generators! A couple of 'em!" she called, and knelt down to see if she could stir them into life.

Max worked her way around the periphery with her phone flashlight. Next to the stairs she found an empty vehicle bay, big enough to hold maybe 3 vans. The door at the backside of that area was locked, but peering through the reinforced glass window, Max saw what appeared to be a row of cages. Straitjackets and other restraints hung on the wall beside them. Before she could comment, the space filled with a dull mechanical growling as the generators rumbled back into life. Sickly yellow lights flicked on. Many of them failed to light or flickered dimly, throwing blocky shadows into the corners. Turning her back to the cells, Max saw a few rows of desks supporting boxy 90's computer monitors; Their beige plastic yellowed and their screens caked with dust. Another set of reinforced glass windows blocked off what looked to be a medical area. Max noted grimly that the beds all featured restraints.

"What in the world did they do here?" Max wondered aloud. Dimly lit, covered with a film of dust and mildew after 20 years of disuse, the place looked like something from a torture film. She couldn't help but compare it to Jefferson's dark room, which had been outwardly clean and professional. She couldn't decide which was worse; the lie or the naked horror.

"Let's find out. I found a VCR and a projector!" called Steph. She was examining equipment up against the far, bare wall between the rows of desks.

"They did tests," echoed Jane's voice, from the other side of the facility. She was digging in some of the cabinets. "They weren't always pleasant, but I learned more about my power here than at anywhere else."

"Why would you volunteer if you knew ... all this was waiting for you?" called Max. She picked up a folder atop a filing cabinet and began leafing through it. Looked like faxes between this facility and sister sites in New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles and a few other places. The most recent was a closure notice from New York from 1996.

Jane's voice laughed back at her from across the empty space, "Me and pain are old friends, after all this time. Besides, what were they going to do? Kill me?"

"Well, that's fine for you, but what about everybody else?" Max said, though not loudly enough for Jane to hear her. Moving to a nearby desk, she leafed through a stack of police reports from around the country. Max read one about a New York woman who vanished from police custody after attacking people with a sword in a nightclub, and another about a young boy in Raleigh who was sole survivor of a freak electrical fire in his apartment building. Both were from before she was even born.

"Got it!", called Steph.

Suddenly the far wall was filled with the blurry image of a man in a white coat talking on a stage. "You're all familiar with the concept of entropy; the force in the universe that works towards chaos; that breaks things down. Well, what if there's an equal and opposite force? One that seeks order. One that pushes the fundamental building blocks of the universe towards control."

Steph called out, "Looks like we only get one speaker, and the projector lens is jammed, so this is as focused as it gets."

The blurry man in the video continued, despite murmurs from his audience, "Matter. Energy. Time. Space. Picture them as a sheet, pulled taut. It is possible that an extraordinary mind would create a depression on that sheet via this force of control, just as a massive object does upon space-time via the force of gravity. And is it then possible that a truly extraordinary mind; one in a million, might create such a depression on the sheet as to pull in these threads, like a black-hole, until they become inextricably bound up in it, and the mind becomes able to manipulate the universe directly? That it develops a link to an aspect of the universe and is able to control it as if it were another limb?"

Steph called out, "Jane, how much of this was Dr. Blurry here right about?"

From somewhere in the back corner came Jane's reply, "A lot. I don't know about the metaphysics of it all, but in practice he was right about most of it."

Max wandered over toward Steph as the blurry figure continued, "If the human mind were capable of exerting control on the universe via this force, then it should be measurable, and detectable, much in the way we can detect massive objects by their distortion of space-time and bending of light. What would be especially easy to detect would be when two such minds came into contact. In theory their links to this force of control might interact in violent and unpredictable ways, much as when two massive objects collide in space."

The speech in the video stopped. It seemed the speaker was engaged in a conversation with others in the room, off microphone. Steph had the volume maxed, but with the poor quality of the audio, neither of them could quite make out what was being said.

"Is that you and Rachel?" Steph asked Max, "Massive objects in space?"

"I guess," Max shrugged. She couldn't help but feel a certain gravitation toward Rachel, or more precisely, at times she felt trapped in Rachel's orbit.

Steph called out loudly to Jane again, "Could they actually detect people? Did they catch Rachel? Was she here?"

Jane responded, "In the timelines where I volunteered and the place stayed open until the present, yes, they did. She was here."

Steph smiled at Max who was squinting at the blurry, projected figure, trying to make out more of his features, "Max, if Rachel was here that might mean we were right! About her causing your tornado!"

"If Rachel was here, I don't think she was happy about it. There's a bunch of cells and straitjackets in the back."

"I guess not everybody was a volunteer."

"I'm glad this place got shut down in this timeline. I don't know if answers are worth this kind of suffering."

As if to offer a rebuttal, the voice on the video started speaking into the microphone again, seemingly mid-sentence, "... before a baby can learn to walk, it must first learn that it control its legs. And before it can do that it must realize that its legs are part of its own body. To establish control of one's link to the supernatural, there must be a trigger event. A kick that makes one activate their supernatural link. Most likely it would have to happen to a young adult or adolescent. Someone whose mind is fully formed, but still malleable."

Max and Steph exchanged glances. Max wasn't sure she would describe her own mind as 'fully formed.' Steph wasn't sure she appreciated being called 'malleable.'

"And what kind of event would this be? Well, it would have to be something traumatic, and yet nothing so obvious as direct personal threat. That happens every day. It may have to be the exact right threat to the exact right person or thing under the exact right circumstances, and then of course, you would also have to realize what happened. Not brush it off as adrenaline or a bad dream. So if possessing a link is one-in-a-million, but only one in a million of those find their trigger event, and only one in a million of those actually realize what happened, then we start to see just how rare-RRR-RRR-RRR KA-CHUNK!"

Max and Steph stood and watched the static snow projected on the screen for a moment before realizing the VCR had eaten the tape. Steph surveyed the damage, but it was bad enough she'd need to take the VCR apart to save the tape.

"So people could have powers and not even know it. Jane, what..." Steph looked around for Jane but could no longer see her. "Max, what was your trigger?"

Max took a moment to answer, lost in thought, "Chloe being shot. What's weird though is that I didn't actually know it was her at the time."

"To hear this guy tell it, the trigger might not have worked if you knew. Crazy! I wonder what Rachel's trigger was, or if she even knew what she could do? I mean, how many days does it have to rain when you're sad before you start to wonder if you're a wizard? I bet it's a shitload!"

"Jane did say this was only the first loop where I developed powers, and it sounds like she's been through... I don't know, maybe a hundred loops? If that's true, then I guess that guy in the video is right," Max looked down at her hands, pondering the strange twists of fate that led to her discovering her power. It made some kind of cosmic sense that Chloe Price, of all people, had to be there when her power unlocked. Her trigger event, to use the video's term. She couldn't help but be jealous of those 99 other Maxes who didn't have to deal with this craziness.

Steph knelt down and searched through the additional video cassettes on the projector cart. All were unlabeled. They'd have to find somewhere else to watch them, she supposed. "What's the deal with Jane, Max? I mean I'm picking up hints that she has the same power as you, but what do mean she's been through loops? Is it like Groundhog Day?"

Max nodded, "I guess, but instead of just one day, it's her entire life."

"Whoa! That's... Wow. Okay, I don't know if that's better or worse!" Steph stood and turned to face Max, "Do you know what she wants? I mean, why did she bring us... SHIT! MAX!"

But it was too late. Max knew exactly what had happened the instant she felt it. The sudden sting at the back of her neck. The hot rush of injected chemicals. The world going blurry and sideways. She'd felt it all before. As she collapsed to the floor she heard Steph call her name again, then saw her grab the tire iron off the floor to rush to her aid.

"Not this time!" Max thought to herself. She reached out with her mind and grasped at the stuff of time. She weaved her fingers through it and clenched. Grinding her teeth and screaming, she flexed every muscle in her body. She would rewind her way out of this if it killed her! Wrenching, grasping, tearing, she pulled time backward with all the will she could muster, scouring, burning synapses. She saw Steph slow in mid-stride, grinding to a crawl, tire iron raised high, shouting angrily at whoever was behind Max. Almost! Almost!

But it wasn't helping. The drug was still taking her. Her vision was dimming and her hearing going numb and fuzzy. She couldn't feel her legs. She looked down at them just in time to see Jane step over her, empty syringe in one hand. In the other, the bright gleam of a blade, moving toward the time-stuck Steph. Max resisted as long as she could, but her body was failing her and her attacker was immune to rewind. For her struggle, all Max managed to accomplish was having to watch Jane murder Steph in slow-motion. Steph fell to the floor in front of Max, bleeding from the chest. The look of shock and confusion on her steadily-draining face was the last thing Max saw before everything went black.

 


	5. Like Embers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the wake of Chloe's sacrifice, Max Caulfield may finally find the answers she needs from the last person she suspects, but she may not like what she hears. If she can find the courage to face the truth, she may even find a way to change not just Chloe's fate, but that of everyone she's ever loved!
> 
> This time, after a nightmarish encounter with Rachel Amber, Max desperately searches for a way out!

Chapter 5; Like Embers

My hopes are like embers  
Lying around inside a firebed  
And your mind is a firewalker  
It steps on them like they are dead

But, I can grow  
In spite of all you know  
You might not recognize me tomorrow

-Liz Phair, Firewalker

 

**October 11, 2013. Or not.**

Into Max's world of blackness and numbness there came a roaring. And then a biting cold. And then a stinging. Many little stings. All over her skin.

"You never tried, Max? Not even once?" said the roaring.

Max forced her eyes open. It was the night of the tornado. She was standing on the Arcadia Bay lighthouse cliff... No, not standing. Floating. Above the town. Inside the funnel! She couldn't see the town through the flying water and debris, but she knew it was there, in the way one knows things in dreams. Before her floated the form of a girl, shapeless and airy, only distinguishable as a void among the swirling winds. On one side of its head hung a disembodied blue glow in the shape of a feather.

"Rachel!" Max gasped, "What am I doing here?"

"I just wanted some company," replied the Rachel-shaped void, matter-of-factly.

"What are  _you_  doing here?"

"I'm not here. I mean, I am, but not the part of me that would know why. You woke me when you tried to save Chloe. That was nice. I was rooting for you! Shame you fucked it up." Max hadn't heard Rachel's voice before, but it was exactly what she expected; honeyed and imperious.

The wind tore at Max's skin. Her hair whipped her eyes. Far below she could hear the sounds of cracking lumber and rolling cars. "Rachel, why are you doing this? Why do you want to destroy Arcadia Bay?"

"I don't  _want_  anything, Max. I'm dead. I could probably come up with some good reasons, though. If I was alive. Which I'm not. And thanks for that, by the way. You never even thought about saving me, did you? Someone else had to remind you that was even an option."

The rain slashed Max across the face in sheets. She cowered behind her arms for protection, yelling desperately, "I'm sorry! I'm trying now! I will try! I promise!"

"Is that like how you promised Chloe you would call and write and visit when you went away? She showed me the texts, you know. Saddest shit I've ever seen. Chloe deserves better!"

Max staggered backwards, or felt like she did. She had only a vague awareness of her own location within the funnel cloud. She knew she was dreaming. She had to be. Rachel was dead. Chloe was dead. The storm was at rest. Even if Steph had been right about about a part of Rachel; her rage, her power, being left behind; these weren't Rachel's words. There wasn't anything left of Rachel that could form words, but that didn't make them sting any less.

"You don't get to say that to me!" Max shouted into the heart of the storm, "You cheated on her! You broke her heart! If you hadn't filled her head with all this bullshit about running away to California she'd still be alive! Chloe would be better off if she never met you!"

The ghostly apparition's eyes flared wide. Thrusting her hand at Max, fingers outstretched, her enraged scream drowned out the roar of the wind. Suddenly Max caught the full force of the tornado directly in the chest. Hurled backward, she tumbled end over end, a leaf on the breeze. Rachel's voice filled her ears from every direction, "I was murdered, Max. What's  _your_  excuse? Maybe I couldn't be exactly what she needed me to be, but at least I tried. I was around. I put in the effort."

The buffeting gale threw Max into the sky, or maybe the ground was gone now altogether. The rain lashed her face. Lightning missed her by inches. Rachel's voice continued, "You think I'M the problem? I'm the one that hurt her? What's that saying? Tis better to have loved and lost than to spend five years waiting for your dipshit best friend to even fucking text you once!"

Gathering her resolve, Max planted her feet. Or at least, believed she did. She wasn't even sure if she had feet in this weird, disembodied dream-state, but perhaps believing would be enough. She thrust her hand out and grasped at time, dragging the winds to slow them down.

The Rachel-shaped thing at the heart of the storm was a hundred feet away now, yet Max could still hear her voice clearly over the roaring winds, as though it was being seeped directly into her ear. "Think of the life she could have built in all the time she spent waiting for you to care again. It's YOU. You're the one Chloe would have been better off never meeting."

Max clenched her fingers and forced time to its knees; dragged it to a stand-still. Holding her hand out, she advanced upward through the frozen winds. There was a strange resistance, like walking through water, but slowed to a crawl like this, the tornado had lost its teeth.

Rachel's voice broke into a harsh cry. The winds doubled in force. Max screamed right back at her and continued to climb. Cinching her grip on time ever tighter, Max held more and more of the storm in lockstep, its power reduced to a push; firm but harmless. As Max advanced, the Rachel-thing grew more and more desperate, throwing more and more of its fury against her. Blood streamed from Max's nose. She was concentrating with such force her vision was blurring, but yet she held her own. Freezing the wind in time, she took all the rage Rachel could throw at her and kept right on coming.

Through clenched teeth, her outstretched arm shaking from exertion, she shouted, "You. Don't. Get to. Say that. To Me!" and pushed her way upward through the wind until she and the Rachel-shape were almost touching fingertips.

"Weren't you listening, Max? I'm not saying anything. I'm dead," said Rachel's voice, and suddenly the tornado was gone. Max was standing in the Blackwell first floor girl's bathroom, looking at herself in the mirror over the sink, as if she had been yelling at her reflection the whole time. "These are  _your_  words. Not mine.", said the Rachel voice, breathlessly trailing off to nothing.

Max leaned against the wall and looked into the mirror at her gaunt face, her tossed and wild hair, her sunken eyes. She missed the days when the only problem she had with her reflection was hating her freckles. Who the hell even was Max Caulfield anymore? Was there anything left but the power and a collection of traumas?

In the reflection, she saw Jane suddenly appear from the shadows behind her, syringe in hand, and she immediately woke up screaming.

 

* * *

 

**October 24, 2013**

"So you're awake. We just crossed into Oregon. Not far to go now before you get to save the world!"

Max's head felt like it was full of oatmeal, her body, dull and weighty. It didn't seem to want to do what she was telling it.

"Before I what?" she tried to say, but the result was a weak mumble. Her mouth felt stuffed with cotton.

"I lied before. This isn't the first loop where you developed powers. It's the second." It was Jane's voice, she was sure of that. But there was another noise. A whir, like the old VCR motor? No, louder. More growl. More rumble. The occasional dull thump.

"I'll tell you what happened the first time you found your trigger. I came to you and asked your help in restoring my timeline. The original reality! I gave you a chance to save me from this agonizing semi-existence and to save time itself from my mistake," Jane continued. Max felt there was something important she needed to remember about Jane, but for the moment it eluded her.

"Save time?" Max said and this time it came out right. As an encore, she tried moving again. Legs were obeying. Arms didn't want to move. She felt like she was hugging herself and couldn't stop.

"Why am I not surprised you haven't figured this out yet? Every time I die and reawaken in 1978, that's the end of a timeline. It becomes just another dead reality and the NEW reality goes forward from there, until I die in that one, and the cycle repeats. Until we fix ME, the universe has no future. Time can't go any further than my death."

Death. There was something important Max needed to remember about death, too. The light was flickering. Or no, pulsing. She forced her eyes to focus and see what she could see. She seemed to be on the floor of a work van, possibly a painter's van judging by the spattered floor. The light must be coming from streetlights they were steadily passing.

"But would you help? No, you were too busy trying to save your idiot friend. I begged, Max. I  _begged_!" Jane's voice came from in front of her. The van had two perfunctory vinyl chairs, ripped and deflated and worn. Max was directly behind the driver's seat, so she couldn't see Jane, but she must be there. Next to Max was a mattress and sleeping bag, a few loose clothes and stacks of books.

"So this time, I thought I'd try tricking you into doing the right thing. Try a little subtlety. I mean, you  _are_  an idiot. And you were eating out of my hand until your clever little friend with the bad haircut got in the way. So, now, you don't get to choose. You're helping me restore my reality, like it or not."

Steph! That was it! Suddenly Max's senses came back to her with a bitter snap. She felt the dull, cold ache of the side of her face that had been lying on the metal floor. She felt the prickle at the back of her neck where Jane had stuck her. She remembered the life draining from Steph's face. "You fucking killed Steph!", she cried.

Jane's voice sighed, "Before long, one or both of us will rewrite history and she'll be just fine. That version of that girl doesn't matter, Max."

"Fuck you! Her name was Steph and she mattered! You killed her! Why should I let a murderer tell me what to do with my power?" Max tried to move her arms again, only to find the reason she couldn't was that Jane had strapped her into a straitjacket. It stank of must and mildew.

Jane slammed on the brakes and pulled over suddenly. Max slid across the bare metal floor and collided awkwardly with the back of Jane's seat. Throwing off her seat belt, Jane surged into the back of the van and stomped on Max's chest, pinning her to the floor.

Furious, she shouted down at Max, " _Your_  Power? You little moron, it's MY power! You  _stole_  it, just like you stole my whole life! I'm the original! You're nothing but a fake, a copy, and the only thing you can ever do that will matter is help me put the universe back the way it's supposed to be!"

"I am  _not_  a copy! You don't get to control me!" yelled Max. She made a valiant effort to thrash wildly but in the straitjacket on the slippery floor, all she managed to do was wriggle.

"Are you kidding? I  _made_  you! If I hadn't gone back to save my aunt you'd never have even been conceived! Your power, your life... you owe it all to me!" Jane crooned, kneeling down next to Max and gripping her by the chin.

"I don't owe you shit!" Max spat back at her, shaking her head loose from Jane's grasp.

"Oooohh! Feisty!" mocked Jane, standing over her, "What are you going to do, Max? What's the plan? Fight back? Scream for help? Get away?"

Max scooted her back against the wall and glared back at the older woman looming over her as Jane continued, "You think you can do that? And what will that accomplish? I get unlimited do-overs and you don't. Even if you find some way to get away from me, I can just close that loophole next time."

Max's nostrils flared. Her breath came in angry puffs.

"Like maybe next loop instead of killing gamer girl I bring her along and hurt her until you cooperate. Is that what you want? Is that's what you're telling me I need to do?"

Max struggled in the straitjacket. It was loose; probably intended for someone bigger than her, but she couldn't get free.

Jane leaned down and grabbed both shoulders of the jacket to hold Max still. "I don't want things to go that way, but you're the boss. If that's what you want then I guess we can stop on the way and pick up your church-mouse friend."

Max's eyes went wide. Over the last week, trying to make sense of her loss, Max had often found herself thinking of all the people Chloe's sacrifice had saved. Kate Marsh had always been at the top of the list.

"Yeah," Jane crowed, "I bet she screams real good."

Max snapped. She kicked Jane in the chest for all she was worth, yelling, "YOU FUCKING MONSTER!"

Jane fell back onto the mattress, knocking over the stacks of books and scattering various belongings. "You leave Kate alone!" Max said, as sternly as her quavering voice would allow.

Jane slowly pulled herself to her feet. "Oh, I'll leave her alone. If you cooperate. It's simple cause and effect, Maxine. I'm going to be exactly as much of a monster as you make me be. No more, no less."

Still shaking with anger, Max looked away from Jane in an attempt to calm down. She wanted to kick and rage and scream, but she knew in her present position that would all be useless, and may just get her sedated again. If Max's kick had hurt Jane at all, she didn't show it.

"Done with our little tantrum, are we?" said Jane, standing again in the center of the van. "Good. Fucking teenagers. Now, sit still and shut up. You really, seriously do not want to make me pull this van over again."

Max lay on her back and stared at the roof of the van, trying not to panic. The van ground its way back onto the highway and soon settled into a steady rhythm of chewing up miles. Max shut her eyes, held her lips together in a tight line. She breathed curt, forceful breaths through her nose. Every bump in the road tested her ability to hold back the tears. She struggled to keep the mental image of Jane tormenting Kate out of her head.

Fear nipped at her heels. She tried to calm her mind by reminding herself she had managed to escape Jefferson (twice) when she had previously been in situations like this. But those situations weren't like this. Jefferson didn't know about Max's power. Jane knew. Jane knew more about time travel than Max did.

She suppressed a shudder and took another look at her surroundings, searching for... she didn't know. She didn't know what she was hoping to find, but anything was better than staring at the ceiling for the remaining four hours to Arcadia Bay. To her right, she noticed Jane's belongings had been scattered in the scuffle. Something had fallen loose from a stack of books. Something small and white. A note card?

Max wriggled on to her side and, when she was confident Jane wouldn't notice, reached out with her foot and kicked the thing over to her side of the van. Then she lay still, just to make sure Jane wasn't any the wiser. After a few minutes of no response, Max sat up and turned around to examine her prize.

Jane's student ID. The old one. The one she had shown Max when they first met. Issued last year, at the start of Max's junior year, yet worn and cracked as though it was much older. Max supposed young Jane must have had it with her when she went back to 1978. Unfortunately, not very useful to her current...

No!

No, it couldn't be!

Max held her breath and waited to make sure she was really feeling what she thought she felt, and not just a bump in the road or lingering effect from the sedative.

Yes! There it was again! The pull! The strange, luring sensation and burst of sounds she felt when she first discovered her ability to time travel through photos. It was definitely the same sensation she had felt two weeks ago while holding the old picture of herself and Chloe at breakfast. Was it possible she could travel into a photo of Jane? Were they close enough to the same person that was feasible, or had their similar powers created some sort of bridge between them? Or, if Jane was to be believed, their shared power?

More importantly, where would this take Max? And when?

From her position sprawled awkwardly on the floor, she glanced up at Jane. By the older woman's feet lay a black canvas bag. Max could see the plungers of several more syringes sticking out of it. Wherever this photo would take her, it had to be better than here.

Trying to keep her breathing as quiet as possible, she concentrated on the photo. The image pulsed like a beating heart. Faint sounds went in and out of her hearing; girls talking, shoes on tile, the whir of a printer. There was a resistance she wasn't expecting, almost as if there was an opposing will trying to keep her out. She felt like there was an unseen hand pushing directly on her brain, but Max pushed back! Again and again the focus slipped away from her and again and again she started over, trying to nail it down. It took far longer than she expected, and far more effort than any other focus, but Max persevered.

She heard the telltale click of the camera, and saw the flash.

And she was somewhere else entirely.

 

 


	6. Never Go Back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max takes a strange trip.
> 
> How much will she give up to save those she loves the most?

Chapter 6; Never Go Back

Drag your wagon and your plow over the bones of the dead  
Out among the roses and the weeds  
You can never go back and the answer is no  
And wishing for it only makes it bleed  
And I want to know the same thing we all wanna know  
How's it going to end?

-Tom Waits, How's it Gonna End?

 

**Sept 1, 2012**

For a long time, Jane Caulfield stood and stared at her own stupid, freckled, teenage face in the mirror of the Blackwell Academy first floor girl's bathroom.

She stared and stared and stared.

Or rather, she didn't. She wasn't there.

Her body did. It was there. And the face in the mirror was hers. But the mind behind the brown eyes was somebody else entirely.

Well, somebody else partially. Whatever was in charge of keeping track of these things had evidently decided that Max and Jane Caulfield were close enough to the same person that Max was able to use her time-jumping focus ability to travel into a photo of Jane. A photo from just over a year ago. In a dead reality.

"I'm Jane!" Max said to the reflection. Her reflection. No. Jane's reflection. But, wowser, did it ever look like Max! Max crossed with Jane. A more mature, stylish haircut. Different nose. Brown eyes. Taller. They could be sisters.

"I'm. Jane," she said. Actually, in a way, she supposed, they  _were_  sisters. Same Dad, after all.

"I  _am_  Jane!" she tried. She was hoping there existed a way of saying those words that would make them sink in.

"I'm... Jane.  _I_  am Jane!" Nope. Not working. "I can't concentrate with you staring at me!" she told Jane's reflection and turned away. Behind the stalls, she found a familiar, shiny mop bucket. Turning it over, she sat on it and stared into the corner.

"Okay, Max, get a grip," she thought to herself, taking a deep breath. "You focused into a photo of Jane, and now you  _are_  Jane. This is actually... okay. This is what Warren would call the 'expected result!'"

It hadn't been any easy trip. When she first arrived, everything was out of focus and movement was awkward. Max had never been falling-down drunk, but she imagined that was what it felt like, and fall-down she did. A blonde, blurry blob that turned out to be Taylor and a striped, blurry blob that turned out to be Courtney had to catch her. It took all her concentration to keep from becoming disoriented and losing the focus. Every step was a struggle, like she was working the strings of a marionette via another, larger marionette.

She didn't remember much of her conversation with Taylor and Courtney. She could barely hear at first, like she was listening to them through a wall. Eventually she made the excuse that she needed to splash some water in her face (Jane's face) and came into the bathroom for a much needed moment to collect herself.

"It's so crazy to be back in this bathroom again. I mean... the last time I was here..." Max shuddered. She was sitting only inches from where she had curled into a ball and let her favorite person in the world bleed out from a gunshot wound. She felt that, if not for the distracting awkwardness of inhabiting Jane's body, she would almost certainly break down into a sobbing mess. She knew with a sudden clarity she would never be able to go back to this bathroom again, or even back to Blackwell itself. Maybe even all of Arcadia Bay was dead to her now.

Although, according to Jane, in this timeline, Chloe's shooting never happened. Even if Jane had lied, it wouldn't have happened  _yet_. This was 2012. Max herself was just starting her junior year back in Seattle. No, wait, she wasn't. This reality didn't  _have_  a Max. But still, Chloe was theoretically alive here.

That thought pulled her to attention. "Okay, Max. Steph is gone, so you have to be the Steph now. Think! This is a dead reality. It ends when Jane leaves to go back to 1978 save her aunt. So I guess... nothing I do here really matters or changes anything, unless I stop Jane from leaving somehow." Max's face brightened at the thought, "And if I do that, then she never goes back to 1978 and she won't be there to kill Steph and... no, wait."

Max's head hurt. She had a hard enough time wrapping her mind around these things even without the added strain of struggling to maintain her focus. She tried drawing it out in the air with her fingers.

"The Jane that arrives in 1978 is already there. Or, I guess, already  _has been_  there in that timeline. If I stop Jane from leaving, this reality keeps going, but mine... ends? What was the word she used? Mine would cease. Become dead. There would be nothing for me to go back to. I would..." Max shuddered again. She would face death for Chloe Price, or at least she liked to think she would, but the prospect of never having existed at all was a gut punch she wasn't ready for.

The door suddenly opened. Max leapt to her feet; Well, she leapt to Jane's feet; and peeked around the corner of the stalls, half expecting to see Nathan Prescott brandishing a gun and talking to himself. But no, it was just Stella, doing neither of those things. Max raised her hand to wave, but Stella took one look at her and turned right around and left. Weird. As Stella opened the door on the way out, the sights and sounds of the hallway briefly intruded.

Hearing the murmur of voices shook Max out of her thoughts. Somewhere out there, Chloe was alive. Steph too! And probably even Rachel! Despite what it meant for her own fate, Max resolved not to sit in the bathroom and ignore this chance to save them all. "Just go and look," she told herself. "See what it's like. And then... then decide."

It was like Blackwell, filled with faces. Some she knew. Some she didn't, but couldn't say for sure if they were the same unknown faces as in her reality. The sounds were the same. The catty chirp of gossiping girls. The oafish grunts of boisterous jocks. Between them, the  _others_. Darting through traffic, heads down, hoping just to get through the day. Her people.

Taylor and Courtney were waiting for her outside. It took her a moment to recognize them. Jane had an inch, maybe two, of natural height on Max, and she wore stack-heeled boots instead of flat sneakers. Max was still adjusting to everybody else seeming shorter than she expected.

Taylor tilted her head and put her hand on Max's arm, "You okay? You were like 20 minutes in there."

Max recoiled at the touch, "You were... waiting? Why aren't you with Victoria?"

Taylor tilted her head back the other way, "Uh... Victoria transferred, remember? Wanted to get into that photography program at Northfield?"

Courtney crossed her arms and sassed, "How do you not remember that? She wouldn't shut up about it for like a month!"

Taylor laughed and peered into Max's eyes, "Are you high or something? You'd tell us if you'd found somewhere to score some better weed, right?"

Courtney made an exaggerated handwave, "I can't take any more of Sheldon and his fucking sticks and seeds!" Taylor nodded in agreement.

Max didn't know what that meant and she was growing annoyed, "No, I'm not high, I'm fine. I just need a little while to myself."

The change in Courtney and Taylor was immediate. Without another word, they turned and walked away, Taylor stealing a concerned glance back at her before both disappeared around a corner. Max stood there blinking. Was this what it was like to have minions instead of friends? Was this the Victoria Chase experience? Was Jane the Victoria of this reality? And was it weird that Max was a little sad she wouldn't get to see Victoria? Of all the people to miss!

She scanned the faces in the hall. Near the door to the stairs stood a security guard she hadn't seen before. He was a little younger than David Madsen with blonde hair and a thin, clean-shaven face. He seemed strangely familiar, but Max couldn't place him. She was certain he wasn't around in her reality, or at least, he wasn't a guard. She definitely knew him from somewhere.

She recognized some of the sides of beef preening by the trophy case. She was certain one of them was Zachary and one was Logan, but she wouldn't want to have to guess which was which. They seemed largely the same. One of them shoved a passing smaller boy and it took her a moment to realize it was Nathan Prescott, in large part because he didn't retaliate. No death threats, no shouting, nothing!

Nathan was walking with a girl Max didn't recognize. Thin, almost willowy, with mousey brown hair. Max shot a glare at Logan and/or Zachary, and to her great surprise, they both withered and turned to leave.

She stared down at her hands. What kind of crazy power did Jane have here that she could wilt bullies with a glance? She looked back to Nathan and his girl... friend? They were holding hands now. She was laughing. He was smiling. He seemed ... happy? Did Nathan Prescott even  _do_  happy? She was pretty sure she'd never seen him anything but various shades of angry in her world.

Max wandered toward the south wing classrooms, hoping to find Chloe in the science labs. Coming to the door to the wing, she was stopped in her tracks by something taped to it, and by the realization she had become so inured to tragedy in general and these damn things in particular that she had already walked right past 10 other Rachel Amber missing posters without noticing them.

She plucked the poster off the door and held it. "No! This... this doesn't make any sense. It's too soon!", she said out loud. The poster was new, fresh. Someone had put this up today, or at least very recently. The photo was different. Rachel looked younger, though she still wore that same single feather earring. According to the poster, Rachel had been missing for about a week. Almost eight months earlier than in Max's world.

A hand tapped her shoulder, "Miss Caulfield? Jane?" She turned around to find the voice belonged to a woman she had never seen before, and she would have remembered. A natural beauty, lithe and elegant, with long, flowing blonde hair. Max couldn't place her age, but she must be a parent; she looked too mature to be a student and too well-dressed to be a teacher.

"I'm Sera Amber, Rachel's mom?" she said.

Max didn't reply. She noticed Sera was holding a stack of fresh missing posters. On her face Max read the telltale signs of sleep deprivation and excessive crying. Both looked very familiar.

"Look, I know you and my daughter... I know you weren't friends. But please...  _please_  if you think of anything... anything at all that might help us find our baby!" She placed her hands on Max's and gave a plaintive look. Max wanted to tell her everything would be fine; to offer some comfort, but she just stood there staring dumbly. Sera tapped the phone number at the bottom of the poster Max held, gave her a weak smile and turned to leave.

Max's thoughts raced! Rachel was already missing! Jane  _had_  lied! Or actually, thinking back, she sort of dodged that question, but still. What did it mean that Rachel had gone missing earlier? She thought of Nathan and how much more well-adjusted he had seemed. Perhaps it was naive, but she had difficulty picturing happy Nathan playing the same role as before in that particular tragedy, and that only left one person.

"Jefferson!" Max seethed.

She stamped her foot, spun around and threw the wing doors open, striding ardently to Jefferson's classroom and through the open doorway. She hadn't quite worked out yet what she would do when saw the murderous fuck, which turned out to be good, because he wasn't there.

In the classroom stood a red-headed woman Max didn't recognize, looking through a book of photos with Evan. They both looked up at her dramatic entrance in confusion. Everything was different. The layout of the room, all the photos on the wall, the equipment. This wasn't Jefferson's room any more. Or maybe it never had been in this reality.

"Can we help you, Miss Caulfield?" asked the woman.

"Where's Mark Jefferson?" Max asked angrily.

The woman snorted in disgust. "Still in jail, thank God!" she said.

Max wasn't following. Seemingly, neither was Evan. The woman explained to him, "Mark Jefferson was a promising young photographer, like you, once upon a time. I knew him from back on the Seattle scene. He drugged one of his models and tied her up in a basement. He apparently tried to give her some date-rape drug that makes you forget, but it didn't take and she remembered everything. Turned him in and testified. He's doing 20 years in Snake River I think."

"Wait! I remember the name now!" chimed Evan, "Didn't he publish a photo book? I remember seeing an argument about this online."

" _The Dark Corner_ ," said the redhead, rolling her eyes. "Honestly, it's ... it's not  _bad_. There's some potential there. You could start to see a cohesive style starting to come together."

"I read he only printed a thousand copies, and they're quite sought after by a small group of dedicated fans and apologists."

"Ugh! Jefferson has apologists? Why am I not surprised? See, this is why I don't go in the forums." The redhead said it, but Max was thinking it. This was a world were Jefferson's crimes had been revealed almost immediately and yet some people still found a way to give him a free pass, like until it happens to you it's not real. Well, it had happened to Max, and...

Max's heart skipped a beat.

When you know someone, really know them, you can tell their walk from a mile away, pick out a familiar expression amid a throng of faces, recognize their movements even in silhouette. So when Max saw the double raised bird outside through the window, she knew it was Chloe before she even processed the face, before she heard the distant voice shouting, "Right in the dick!" She turned on her heel and ran through the throngs of students to the front door.

She passed the blonde security guard again. Who was this guy? Where did she know him from? Behind her came a quiet laugh from the hallway, "Looks like Jane's off her meds again," and another, "Quiet! She'll hear you!"

She burst through the front door of the school and turned left toward the picnic tables as fast as she dared to run in Jane's boots, and then she saw her.

Chloe.

Her Chloe. Sitting atop the table, gesturing wildly in the air. Her hair was still long, and still blonde. The arms waving in the air were tattoo-free. She sported denim shorts and a loose t-shirt with a stick figure hugging a buffalo and the caption, 'I found the Huggs Bison!'

Sharing the table with her were a meek-looking boy Max didn't recognize and a girl whom it took Max a moment to realize was Steph, back when Steph had long hair. Max was happy to see Steph, but overjoyed to see Chloe. She ran towards her, arms out, ready to leap into a hug.

"Whoa, what are you doing?" Chloe cried, recoiling in alarm and jumping down to put the table between the two of them.

Max's heart broke into tiny pieces. Chloe looked at her with a mix of confusion and revulsion. Not in all the nightmares she had been through had anything prepared her for a Chloe who hated her. It hurt. Deep and sharp and physical. It would have been better to be stabbed. She knew why, of course. To outward appearances, she wasn't Max right now; She was Jane. But that didn't make it any easier to take.

She glanced over at Steph, whose fists were balled up tight. She was trying to hide a furious scowl by looking away. The boy just hung his head and averted his eyes, seemingly hoping to avoid being noticed.

"Chloe..." she started lamely. She wanted to tell her everything. She wanted to gush about their alternate lives together; about pool break-ins and mystery-solving and pirate adventures, but it was impossible. This reality didn't have a Long Max Silver. Captain Bluebeard sailed alone, and nothing Max could say or do would make her understand what she had missed. If she had even missed anything at all.

"Jane, I don't know what you want, but we're kind of in the middle of something here," Chloe said, shooting a concerned glance at Steph.

Max just stood there, mouth agape, staring into the eyes of the person who meant the most in the world to her and seeing only confusion and fear. Max looked at Steph, who was still looking away, seemingly struggling to hold back tears. She looked at the boy, who seemed concerned for his friends but too scared to say anything. And she looked at the missing poster still in her hands. Shaking, she asked Chloe, "How's your dad?"

"Why do you care about my dad?", Chloe asked, genuinely stumped.

"Just... can you just tell me? Tell me and I'll go," Max stammered, looking down at the grass.

Chloe looked more confused than ever, but answered cautiously, "He's fine. Or at least he was when I saw him this morning."

Max nodded grimly, "This morning? That's... good. That's so good!" more to herself than anybody else, and bolted past the table to the stairs down to the dormitories. She wanted more than anything else to throw her arms around Chloe and say good-bye, to tell her she loved her, but she couldn't. This wasn't her Chloe.

But it was a good Chloe. A happy Chloe. A Chloe worth saving, even if that meant...

Once Max was out of sight behind the wall, she threw her back against it and slid down to a seated position. She wanted to break down into tears. She wanted desperately to cry and wail, but she was afraid that would break her concentration and kick her out of the focus. And she had work to do.

Looking down at the missing poster she still held, she said to the photo, "I'm so sorry, Rachel! I know what I said. I said I would try. But... just look at her. She's happy! She has Steph, she has friends. She has her dad! There's no Jefferson here. She doesn't need money. She must have avoided the accident that paralyzed her. That would have been a year ago! She'll go to college next year. She'll have a future! Maybe... maybe we were both right."

Max let the poster fall from her hands to the ground. Taking a deep breath, she said, "Maybe she really is better off without either of us."

She heard the boy's voice carry from the other side of the wall, "Chloe, what was that all about? How does Jane know your dad?"

Chloe voice answered, "She doesn't. I mean, I've known her for years. She was in elementary school with me and Steph. The class behind us. But we're not friends. She's never met my Dad."

The boy responded, "Why  _would_  you be friends? That girl is mean!"

Steph added bitterly, "That girl is crazy!"

"Steph..."

Steph continued her rant, "I know she and Rachel are at each other's throats all last year, but when Rachel went missing, Jane was fucking happy about it. That's sick!"

"Steph..."

"No, Mikey, seriously! If Rachel ran away because of her, or hurt herself or something..."

Chloe broke in, with the usual lilt in her voice when she was trying to cheer someone up, "Come on, Steph, let's get back to the game. How about you make an orc that looks like Jane, and me and Ellamon will smash it for your amusement."

The boy; Mikey, apparently; said quietly, "But if it's a girl orc, how will Calamastia know where to punch it?"

Chloe laughed, "I can punch a girl orc in the dick! Don't be so literal! There's more to dick punches than just punching someone in the dick! It means like you're  _really_  punching them. So they know you mean it. Like, punching their  _essence!_  And also, if an actual, physical dick is present, you punch that as well, just to keep the theme consistent."

Max sat on the far side of the wall, grinning like an idiot with tears running down her face. She couldn't remember the last time she had heard Chloe sound so carefree. Actually, she could, and they were both dressed as pirates at the time.

There were worse things than never existing, she supposed. It was becoming increasingly clear to her she didn't know how to keep on living without Chloe. She hated the idea of letting Jane win after what she had done to Steph, but here was the answer, right in front of her! Chloe and William, alive, healthy and together. Jefferson in jail. This might be as good as things would ever get.

With a resigned weariness, Max began looking through Jane's bag for paper and pen, while mentally trying to compose a letter that would convince young Jane not to go back and save her aunt. A letter that would end not only Max's life, but her very reality as well, and everything she'd ever known.

She would write the letter, end her focus, and then... nothingness.

But, for Chloe Price?

Worth it.

 

 


	7. The Strangest Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe some truths are better unlearned.

Chapter 7; The Strangest Dream

I had the strangest dream.  
I dreamed I killed you again  
Don't make me kill you again  
'cause I couldn't bear to kill you  
Again

-They Might Be Giants, Ondine

**September 1, 2012**

It was over.

Jane had won.

Max dug young Jane's notebook out of her bag to compose a letter that would remove Max and her very reality from existence. A few strange pieces of paper and plastic slipped out of the notebook and fluttered to the floor.

Max looked down at them. She looked back at the notebook.  _Jane,_  she wrote with shaking hands,  _You don't know me, but I come from a reality that was created after you went back in time to 1978 to save your aunt. I know you are planning that now._

Max looked back down at the loose papers. One of them was a laminated note card. That was strange.

_I also know that your attempt to save your aunt's life results in losing your own. You mother's life goes in a very different direction with her sister alive._

The others looked to be newspaper clippings pinned to some notes. Or photocopies of newspaper clippings.

Huh.

_You parents both marry other people. I am born in your place. You are thrown into endless loops and your life restarts over and over again after you die._

She thought maybe she recognized the handwriting on that laminated card.

_I came here via a power very similar to your own. I'm asking you, please, don't go back to 1978. Things are so different between our two realities. It's better this way for you, and for the people I love._

"But  _why_  are things so different?" Max asked the missing poster photo of Rachel Amber. "I mean, I know Warren said 'butterfly effect' but isn't that just a fancy way of shrugging? There has to be a reason, right?"

She looked back at her letter.

She looked back at the loose papers.

She looked back at Rachel.

"Okay. I think I get to be nosy one last time," she said to the poster, and picked up the papers.

It turned out she did recognize the handwriting on the laminated note card. It was her father's! Or, Jane's father, she supposed. Same guy. Different reality. Same handwriting. Mom's medication schedule, it read. Wowser! Max didn't recognize most of these drugs, but there were a lot of them. It was kind of mind-boggling to see her father's script referring to someone else as 'Mom.' She wanted to go see him and see what he was like. See for herself what he looked like with no beard.

The next set of papers were mostly newspaper clippings. An obituary and a few headlines all telling the same story of Jane's aunt of the same name. Jane Fisher. 9 years old. Died June 3, 1978 in a fall from the top of the Arcadia Bay lighthouse. Survived by her parents and twin sister Katie. So that much, at least was true, and clearly so was the psychological effect it had on young Jane's mother.

Clipped together she found the strangest of all; notes and articles about the blizzard of 1886. She'd heard of it, of course, one of few noteworthy historic events in her small town. A particularly nasty storm that struck right at the beginning of the Academy's construction. Nearly derailed the whole project.

Max shook her head in confusion. Why would Jane make a note of that? Had she been planning to time travel that far back? Max had never even considered going back before her own birth. Would Jane do that, she wondered? And why?

With these was a map of the 2nd floor of Blackwell, with a single room marked with a circle, and a hand-written note specifying 10:30am of a day a week prior.

Wait, it wasn't the  _room_  that was marked. It was the door! Max recalled that Jane's version of her time-traveling focus power worked using doors, not photos. If Jane had marked this particular door, there must have been a reason.

"Well, shit," said Max, lowering the papers. Her eyes met the eyes of Rachel Amber's photo in the crumpled missing poster. "Come on, Rachel, we'd better go see what this is all about."

It didn't take her long to find it. The second floor language lab. Still used on very rare occasions but mostly neglected, doomed to be replaced with more modern equipment sooner or later. Presently, the door was locked, although what she could see through the window next to the door seemed unremarkable. She looked down at the notes and articles in her hands. Two times seemed to stand out. The labeled 10:30 meeting on the prior week, which would have been the first day of orientation. Only new students, orientation volunteers and student government would have been on campus. The other date was that of the blizzard over a century ago.

"Okay, if I'm Jane, maybe I can use Jane's door power," Max said out loud. There was nobody in this part of the hall, and even if there was, she was past caring what anybody else thought of her sanity. Laying her belongings on the ground, she leaned against the door and placed both hands on its surface.

"I feel like an idiot," she told Rachel's photo, but no sooner had she said it than she felt time moving on the other side of the door. She could see and hear people moving in and out. She found it fairly simple to push up or down with her mind and sift through the visions on the other side. Once she had a handle on the ability, it didn't take Max long to dial in to the 10:30 meeting. The room was empty. Fast forwarding a while she saw Hayden and Dana, eventually joined by Taylor and Courtney and a few other kids she didn't recognize. They seemed to be waiting for somebody.

Dana said, "Well, still no answer on text. It's weird. It's not like Rachel to be late."

"That's really rude of her to ditch a meeting she called!", chided Taylor.

Hayden added, "Usually she's here before everybody else."

Conspiratorially, Courtney confided, "I think she wanted to talk about Jane. She's worried Jane wants to like, join the Vortex Club. Or destroy it." Hayden visibly winced at both possibilities.

Dana offered, "Oh! I saw Jane leaving the building when I arrived. I didn't even think she was supposed to be on campus!"

Taylor crowed, " _So_  not Vortex!"

Max smirked. More Vortex nonsense. That was the last thing she needed to hear. She let go of the door and could feel the time portal close. The eerie yellow glow that surrounded the edges disappeared. Whatever had been the significance of that meeting, Max couldn't see it. Maybe Jane had planned to meet Rachel there?

That just left the date of the blizzard.

"Okay, little door, time for a trip in the Wayback Machine!" Max leaned into the door and wound it all the way back to 1886, decades flicking past in the blink of an eye. Just as she was starting to wonder how the metaphysics worked on a door rewinding through time to before its own construction, she felt the chill and dry air on the other side. She heard... nothing. No, not nothing. The distinct, eerie quiet of heavy snowfall, when all the world is smothered.

"Well, this is the most fucked up thing I've done all day," she told Rachel's poster, "and I'm not even in my own body right now!"

Max opened the door, and there was snow. Great fat pelting flakes you could feel landing. The woods behind the school were caked in white, bending under the weight of it.

Amid the snow, some thirty feet below the door, she saw the barest foundations of Blackwell academy, little more than the basement slab and some basic framework and nothing else around for miles. Just below the door, in an outline of disturbed snow was a figure kneeling, huddling, trying to stay warm. A figure with hair like running honey and a very familiar red flannel shirt. A single blue feather danced in the breeze by the side of her head.

" _Rachel!_ " called Max, instinctively.

Rachel turned. She seemed to be favoring one leg, as if she had injured the other in a fall. "JANE!" she screamed in a furious, panic-stricken voice, "What the hell is this? What did you do to me?"

She was shivering. Only wearing shorts. She wouldn't last long in weather like this. Max stumbled for a reply, still trying to process what she was looking at it. The snow swirled around her into the Blackwell hallway. She stammered, "I don't... what  _did_  I do?"

"You left me here to  _die!_ " Rachel screamed in frustration and the wind suddenly kicked up. The gust sent Max stumbling backward amid a swirl of snow and slammed the classroom door shut. She could feel the tunnel through time close when the door did, the moment her fingers left it. The distinctive yellow glow dissipated from the edges of the door frame. Max slipped on the snow and fell, banging her head against the lockers on the far side of the hallway. Her vision and hearing felt disconnected from her head. She was losing the focus! Slipping away back to her own world where the back of Jane's van and a straitjacket awaited!

The ruckus had attracted the blonde security guard Max had seen earlier but failed to recognize. He was running to her from the far end of the hallway, near the stairs, calling, "Miss Caulfield! Are you okay?"

Once she heard his voice, muffled and indistinct though it was, she finally realized who he was. In her defense, without his tattoos and goatee, anybody from Max's world would have found it difficult to recognize Frank Bowers.

"Shit!  _Shit!_  If you're here... How could you be here?" she tried to say, but she was rapidly losing control of Jane's body. The focus would end any second. Her vision was fraying at the edges.

With one last burst of will, she tore her letter from Jane's notebook and crumpled it into a wad. She turned onto her hands and knees and started to crawl. Her limbs, Jane's limbs, no longer wanted to obey her. She had to fight for every inch as she crossed the hall, reached up with shaking hand and stuffed the letter into the hallway recycling bin.

She'd be damned if she was going to let Jane win now.

**October 24, 2013**

Max's realty; her  _actual_  reality; coalesced around her. The faint lingering scent of jasmine from her shirt collar and the musty canvas smell of the old straitjacket. The cold metal floor of Jane's van. The steady rumble of interstate 5. In the driver's seat sat Jane. Old Jane. Cragged face. Dirty jeans and worn sneakers.

"You told me there is no destiny," Max said, clambering awkwardly to her feet. There wasn't quite enough room for her to stand straight and keeping her balance with her arms restrained was tricky, but she didn't want to have this conversation lying on her back.

"So you're back!" said Jane from the driver's seat, looking back at Max in the mirror, "Did you enjoy your trip?"

"Nothing is meant to happen, it can only be  _made_  to happen. Those were your words!" replied Max. Blood trickled down her nose. She shook with anger.

"You realize what this means, right? Your little trip into my student ID photo? It means you  _can_  access dead realities! You  _do_  have the power to restore my reality! Are you sure you want me to know that?", Jane said, pulling her thin lips into a sinister smile.

"All the things that are different between our worlds... Chloe, William, Jefferson ... even Frank fucking Bowers! You changed all of it! It was you!"

Jane stared grimly ahead at the highway. After a minute's contemplation, she answered quietly, "It was me."

" _Why?_ "

"To get you to trigger your power, you idiot! As soon as you came into existence I had to share my link with you, even though you couldn't access it, even though you weren't born yet! The half of my power that would become yours was stolen away from me! You tell me how that's fair!" Jane spat in anger, "I knew the only way I was going to be able to save my reality was to get you to trigger."

"How did you know what my trigger was?"

"Oh, I didn't. What you're seeing is the result of trial and error. Centuries worth of it! Triggers are rare and random. Direct personal threat doesn't work. It's always something obtuse. Something unexpected."

"Direct... personal..." Max said, pondering what that must have meant for prior Maxes in Jane's other loops, "How many times, Jane? How many times did you  _kill me?_ "

"Oh, Max," cooed Jane in a mocking tone, "It's so cute that you think I counted."

"Are you sure you want  _me_  to know  _that?_ " Max parroted.

"Maybe it's important that we understand each other," Jane replied with a weary sigh.

"Make me understand then!" snapped Max, "How did Frank Bowers go from security guard to drug dealer?"

Jane's anger simmered. She explained as if lecturing a child, "I didn't know what your trigger would be, so I set about making the world around you and your friends as dangerous as I could. Didn't you ever wonder why such a small town as Arcadia Bay has such a huge drug problem? I tried keeping local criminals out of jail but it took me several tries to find a guy who really made a difference. Damon Merrick. Nasty piece of work. He's dead now, but he dragged so many other people down into the sewer with him. Frank Bowers was just one of many lives he ruined. You should have seen the job he did on Rachel Amber's mother!"

"You kept this guy out of prison?" Max asked, not entirely following.

"Destroyed some key evidence before the cops found it. In the original timeline, they sent him up to Snake River and he never came back. What a waste of a perfectly good dirtball!"

"And without him, Nathan wouldn't have access to the drugs he used on Rachel or Chloe or Kate," Max mused. She had never really pondered just how much blame Frank was due for Nathan and Jefferson's crimes, but to hear Jane tell it, this Damon Merrick was really the one to fault. Without him around, Frank's life apparently would take a very different turn. She had always assumed that if Frank wasn't there, someone else would just fill the void, but maybe that wasn't true. Maybe without this Damon Merrick to set up the suppliers, or the networks... Max didn't really know crime. Maybe without him, all that was left was; what did Courtney say? Sheldon and his fucking sticks and seeds?

She thought of Sera Amber as well. Beautiful, pristine Sera. What had become of her in Damon Merrick's world? Max didn't know. She wasn't sure she wanted to.

"What about Jefferson? Where did you dig him up?" Max asked.

"That was one of the first things I changed. And the best part is that one was your idea," replied Jane, shooting Max a devilish grin in the rear view mirror.

"Mine?"

"Early on, I broke into your room to get ideas and there was this photobook. You had it on a place of honor on your desk. Like a shrine.  _The Dark Corner,_ " Jane crowed, seemingly relishing this particular reveal, "I did some digging and found out who he was and what happened to him. In that reality, like in mine, he was in jail, but I  _knew_  I had to get you two in the same place."

"No!"

"Oh yes! So, my next loop, his first victim, the one that was going to send him to jail, she has ... you might say, an accident and without her testimony Jefferson walks. I'll admit it took a couple tries to pair him with you after that. He had shows in Seattle but you were so damn shy you would never actually approach him. I had to try a different tack and I thought maybe if I could get him to teach, that would do it. Once you line the pieces up it's all pretty easy, really. That Prescott kid! So impressionable! They got him the job at Blackwell, and that drew you right to him!"

The bottom dropped out of Max's heart. Had she really been a Jefferson apologist? She knew she had been a fan. After all, in this reality, he was the main reason she enrolled at Blackwell, just as Jane had planned, apparently. She hated the idea that in other realities she had ignored his crimes just because they didn't happen to anyone she knew. She hated the idea that she had admired the man and not seen what he really was. She hated it with the stomach-turning certainty that it was probably true, in the sickening way that one recognizes the worst in themselves.

Worse, it meant that everything that Jefferson had done in her own reality was directly her fault. Not in the way Jane meant it. Not in the twisted reasoning of a psychopath, no. Jane may have freed the man and sent him to Blackwell for her own twisted reasons. But she only ever thought to try it because Max Caulfield herself had been selfish and short-sighted enough to venerate a criminal since she cared more about photographs than people. She wanted to throw up. She wanted to put her fist through a mirror. She wanted to roll into a ball and cry.

But she knew there was probably worse still to hear. "And William Price?" she asked Jane, barely managing to keep her voice from cracking.

"Joyce's husband? Oh, come on, that's an easy one. You really need me to tell you?" Jane replied in a way that seemed almost sheepish.

"You killed him! You were driving the truck!"

Jane nodded grimly, "I was driving the truck! That took a couple tries to get right too. It's not easy to cause a fatal accident without hurting yourself. Now of course, I've done it so many times I could kill him with my eyes closed. Well, except one time," Her eyes flicked to Max in the mirror, narrowed to a slit, "There was one loop... he just plain didn't show up. Took me a long time to figure out what happened and course-correct. Years."

"That was the timeline I changed! He took the bus!" Max said.

"Yes. I know.", Jane replied slyly.

Max's eyes went wide as she came to realize what Jane was implying. She felt like she'd been kicked in the stomach, "You paralyzed Chloe! You killed her dad! You fucking BROKE her! Over and over, just to get to me! I'll fucking kill you!"

"All that will do is waste my time and serve to annoy me," retorted Jane, changing lanes suddenly to throw Max off balance. She was forced to lean against the wall of the van to avoid falling over. Jane continued, "And besides, I didn't ruin that girl's life. You did! I don't know the exact chain of events how Damon Merrick plus Mark Jefferson plus William Price equals your trigger event, not to mention all the dozens of other little changes I made, but of all the combinations I tried, that was the first one that did the trick. Trial and error, like I said. In MY world, Chloe Price was just some random nerd I ignored, with a living father and no dangerous drug dealers or psychotic photographers in her life. I wouldn't have had to do anything to her at all if you hadn't stolen half my power. You help me put the world back as it was and she can be that again!"

"Fuck you!" was all Max could manage to reply. Her heart was pounding and her brain was filled with a red heat.

"Look, I know it sounds bad. I mean, I like Joyce Price. You think I  _wanted_  to kill her husband over and over and over? Hell no! See how noble you are after a thousand years of desperation!"

"Fuck you, Jane! I saw what you did. I saw the blizzard! You fucking killed Rachel! You told me the first thing you did with your power was save your aunt, but really it was murder a girl over some petty fucking high school rivalry! You blame the way you are on being stuck in these loops, but in truth you're just a sick fuck, and you always have been!"

Jane suddenly tapped the brakes, sending Max crashing to the floor in a face plant.

"I'm not like you, Max. I didn't have every little fucking thing handed to me on a goddamn platter! Your mom was stable. Your family had money. The kids at school didn't know you as the crazy lady's daughter. I had to fight for everything I ever had; Every scrap of respect, every ounce of control! When I found my power, I made the most of it, just like you did. I'm not going to apologize for that."

"None of that justifies all the people you've hurt and killed!" Max said through clenched teeth.

"Max, you've got to understand, none of them are real! You, your friends, your family, the William Price you know. They're not real! They're just copies of the people from my reality. Ghosts! Echoes! Nobody you've ever met was real, except for me. And I've got an entire world to save! So you've really got to think about the future. You've got to think about what's going to happen in the next loop if you keep pissing me off like this. You  _will_  help me fix my world because I  _will_  find a way to force you. What choice do I have?"

Max shuffled as far back from Jane as she could, until she was leaning her head against the back door of the van. She wept bitter, angry tears as her mind raced for a way out, when suddenly her sight was filled with a glimpse of a summer's day, asphalt rolling away behind. She shook her head, worried about how hard she'd hit it, but then came another vision, of the coastal road north of Arcadia Bay. And another, of a winding mountain road flanked by pines.

She had used Jane's door power in her focus. Maybe she could duplicate it now! Jane never said it had to be a stationary door!

She pressed her face against the door and concentrated, seeing fleeting images of various roads and alleys and garages around Arcadia Bay and Seattle and many other places she didn't recognize.

"What are you doing, Max?" said Jane, obviously sensing Max was using her power. "There's nowhere you can go I can't follow!"

She was right. Or was she? Max's mind swam. She thought of the last glimpse she had seen of the mountain road and it reminded her of Steph and their trip through the pine-covered hills. They had talked about...

Dead realities! Jane admitted she couldn't go there... but maybe Max could! Jane's reality in the focus was a dead one and she'd gone there! If she could just find a dead reality, one she knew, one that was familiar... She quickly pressed her face to the door and sifted, searching for anything recognizable that she would know had to be from a dead reality. Luckily, Max had been to at least one dead reality that was very distinctive.

"Stop it, Max! There's no escape! Even if you get away from me I'll just drive this thing off a cliff and start a new loop, and then I won't go so damn easy on you. Is that what you want? All I have to do is die!" screamed Jane.

But Max didn't hear her. She had found what she was looking for and all her hearing was filled with the roar of wind and the hiss of rain. A yellow light surrounded the rear door of the truck. She lodged the point of her elbow behind the latch and pulled.

The door opened, and Max tumbled out through time.


	8. Didn't Happen

Chapter 8; Didn't Happen

The end is near  
And it's high time  
The light's amazing, man  
So time your Instagram  
The rapture swallowing the land  
But we're the last ones laughing  
Pictures or it didn't happen

-Amanda Palmer, Smile

 

**October 11, 2013. For real this time.**

Max Caulfield fell out of a moving vehicle in one reality and landed in the street in another reality altogether.

This reality was dead. It just didn't know it yet. It kicked and screamed and would not be still. A massive tornado, a storm beyond reason perched over the water just outside of Arcadia Bay.

Max landed badly. She rolled along the street, battered and bruised. Ironically, the straitjacket afforded her some protection, keeping her arms tucked in tight to her torso. Her unprotected forehead took a bad scrape, stinging and caked with dirt.

Groaning, she forced herself to focus past the pain. Sitting up, she saw Jane's van driving away, out of town. Or at least, the Jane in that reality, fleeing the tornado. Max wondered if that was when Jane stole the van or if she'd had it the whole time she was living on the street behind the Two Whales. What would have happened if she hadn't warned Jane about the storm? Would it have killed her? And what would that have done? To hear Jane tell it, that would have ended one reality and spawned another; a fresh new loop starting from 1978. Maybe that had already happened! Maybe Jane knew about the tornado the whole time! Max rankled at the thought. That meant there wasn't a single word spoken between herself and Jane that wasn't fake. No moment of interaction when Max wasn't being played. Somehow, despite everything that had happened, that still stung.

Shaking her head, Max focused her thoughts on her surroundings. She scooted her legs under her body and awkwardly rose to her feet. Everything was exactly as she had left it, for whatever that was worth. Raging surf, tossed cars, dead whales. Arcadia Bay lay in ruins, and above the water hovering Rachel's storm, looming like some vast predatory bird.

Nearby, the storm had sheared off the tops of several parking signs, leaving sharp edges on the exposed u-channel posts. Dragging the jacket against the jagged metal, Max managed after several attempts to rip a hole large enough to allow her hand to escape. She quickly undid the straps and wriggled her way out of the musty old thing. As she cast it aside, the wind took it and sent it dancing away down the street. One of the loose sleeves almost seemed to be waving goodbye.

"I guess we're both free now," said Max to herself. She wanted to take a photo of it, but she had no earthly idea where her camera was any more. Glancing down the street, she saw the Two Whales diner was still intact, which meant in this particular dead reality, her camera was with her other self, who would be just escaping the dark room and driving furiously downtown to reach Warren. As soon as that other Max traveled into Warren's photo, this reality would end. As much as she didn't want to have to meet a prior version of herself, she had more pressing problems.

"Okay, let's test this theory, before we bet the farm on it," she mused out loud. Scanning the street she saw most of the doors were broken or blocked with debris, but she managed to find one that was intact on the front office building of the Harbor Inn.

Leaning against the door and doing her best to shut out the weather, Max concentrated on sifting through time. She scrolled up towards the future, saw debris flying as the tornado got closer and then, suddenly, nothingness! Max's brain felt as if it was being pulled from her skull. The void devoured her eyes and ears. She pushed away from the door with all her might, fighting off the sucking emptiness that clawed at her mind. She fell to her seat on the sidewalk, gasping for breath.

Jane was right! Dead realities end when they end, and everything in them ceases. Becomes nothing! Max had maybe 10 minutes to do what she needed to do and escape or this timeline would take her down with it. Debris and chunks of siding fell from the second story, blocking her access to the door.

"There's not enough time!" she cried. "Come on, Rachel! Are you really going to make me do this?"

 

* * *

 

Minutes later, Max stood on the shore of Arcadia Bay, lashed by salty spray and whipping winds. Before her loomed the tornado, a massive, swirling mountain of noise and anger.

Once, she had thought of it as HER storm; her own personal penance for meddling in destiny. She supposed that was arrogant of her, in hindsight, to have imagined there was some cosmic presence that cared so deeply about her fate and the fate of her friends as to send divine retribution when defied. Now, she knew the truth. The storm was little more than a side-effect, and the only hand on the wheel all these years had been Jane's, twisting, warping, mutilating Max's life and the lives of everyone around her to suit her own ends.

Max looked behind her, back at the derailed lumber train she had to climb over to reach the beach. Lying forlorn on its side, tossed off its tracks, logs scattered across the street like pick-up sticks. Just the week prior she and Chloe had run from that train, or at least, one very like it.

She wanted to run now. She wanted to find a dead reality where Chloe was alive and sneak away with her to some other timeline. Get away and start a whole new life. Maybe they could defy destiny after all, but they could not defy Jane. Max knew that now. Even if they got out somehow and Jane never found them, their escape would just bring more suffering to someone else; Another Max and Chloe in another loop or their friends and loved ones.

No, the time for running was over.

Max thrust both hands out in front her, clenching into the flow of time. With little left to lose, she took a step out onto the water, frozen in time. Locked in place, unable to part, the surface of the water held her weight.

Stepping out onto the harbor, she stared down the storm. The winds bit into her face and hands. She moved one arm up in front of her face to block debris, and with that hand she clutched her fingers, slowing the winds by locking them in time, grinding them under the weight of her will. She felt a powerful resistance. Not just the force of the wind, but something more. An opposing will. Not a mind, but something less than that. A remnant. A memory. Raw emotion untethered. Unlike in her drug-induced nightmare, this time it had nothing to say.

"Rachel, you were right!" she yelled into the vortex. "I was selfish! I never really thought about trying to save you! All I wanted was for things to go back to normal!"

Max's arms shook from exertion. Her hands felt like they would seize up into twisted claws. She could feel the winds slowing, the howl of them drawn out into a mournful moan. "I never thought I  _could_  save you! I never thought I had the right to choose! It shouldn't be my decision!"

She felt the force behind the storm struggle and scream, an anguished voice on the wind. The storm threw gust after gust at Max, attempting to drive her back, but reaching out with her mind, Max clawed at the machinery of time, holding it fixed in place. She could feel it in her hands, a tangible, workable thing. It felt like the wax in a lava lamp looks; motile and flowing.

"I didn't ask for this! I didn't want this! But if I have to be the one who chooses, then I fucking choose! Everybody lives!"

With a loud cry and a thrashing motion, Max tore the tornado from time itself. She felt the physical stuff of it come apart in her hands, freezing the storm in place. There was a deafening ripping sound, rising into a lonely wail. No, not a sound. She didn't hear it. This was some other sense entirely, the same that allowed Max to see the ragged edges, to feel the pain of the wound she had ripped into the fabric of the time. The storm still moved, but imperceptibly slow. It would never reach the shore, not in this reality.

Exhausted, Max dropped like a stone into the roiling surf. The salt water stung her eyes and she nearly gasped at the shock of the cold. Her head spun as the current crushed her to the bottom and rolled her back and forth. She fought to right herself, but the waves dragged her along the rough sand and rocks. She tried getting her feet under her but was brutally knocked off balance again and again. She felt her hand break the surface but was thrown down again by the current, submerged stones digging into her back and head. Tossed and dragged like a rag-doll, bruised and bloodied, Max was quickly losing track of which way was even up.

Her lungs burned in screaming, piercing pain. A primal, physical urge to open her mouth and gulp for breath permeated her whole body and she shook from the effort of holding it back. Then suddenly, the decision was made for her. A sharp stone slammed her hard in the small of the back. She involuntarily gasped as her head was thrown back and the cold, salty water rushed down inside her. Max expected to feel crushed, or even more panicked, but mostly she just felt the chill of it; An icy, creeping sensation, like a skeletal hand reaching down her throat.

Her vision dimmed. Time dilated. Whether this was some side effect of her power or an experience common to everyone when they died, Max would never know. She hung suspended and still in the water, unmoving, unbreathing, unfeeling for what seemed both an hour and an instant. The water held her in a way that was strangely soothing. Rest, it seemed to say. No more struggle. No more pain. Just sleep. Sleep forever and you won't even notice the cold.

"Well, this is it," she thought to herself. "Wherever I end up, I hope Chloe is there."

Chloe.

There was another time. Max remembered. As last memories go, it wasn't bad. She could do worse.

There was another time. Like this. These very same waters. In her lungs. The same sand in her eyes.

Drowning.

Dying.

Well, not really. She had  _thought_  she was dying. Just knocked down by a big wave and swallowed some water but, to seven year old Max, it had seemed the same; seemed final.

And then there was a girl! She was only a year older, but bigger than Max. She was always bigger, and she always would be, but there was more. An infinite confidence about her; a swagger in her smile that said she knew she was capable of anything.

This girl had pulled seven year old Max from the waves back then and helped her to her feet. This girl had sat with her while she cried and told her stupid jokes until she smiled again.

Chloe.

Max realized she had never really paid Chloe back for that.

So, no.

No, not yet. It wasn't time to rest.

Soon.

But not yet!

With the last of her strength, she kicked and reached out. Her hand broke the surface, and then suddenly, something had her, she was stuck! No, being pulled! A strong hand had her by the collar and yanked her to the surface. Sputtering and gasping for air, she felt her body dragged through the surf and past the breakers, over the sand to safety. She rolled to her side and broke into a fit of coughing, expelling the last of the salt water from her lungs, then flopped onto her back in the sand, utterly spent. She was tired in places she didn't know she could be tired. Her entire skeletal structure felt like someone had put it through a rock tumbler.

Eventually, Max realized she could hear ragged breathing from the form sitting next to her. Blinking, she wiped the stinging salt water from her eyes. As her vision cleared, she saw above her a purple halo of hair, back-lit by the flames of burning buildings.

"Alyssa? You saved me?" she asked weakly.

Alyssa was sat on her haunch, breathing heavily. Her clothes were wet up to the chest. "Yeah Max, you helped me all those times this week. It would be weird if I didn't pay you back!" laughed Alyssa, rising to her feet. Grasping Max's hand, she helped the smaller girl sit up. Sand sticking to her mussed hair and torn clothes, Max looked right at home amid the storm's flotsam. "You actually weren't that far out, but the current was keeping you under. I saw you go in, but it was so dark! If you hadn't stuck your hand up I wouldn't have found you!"

Max blinked at her weakly. She had no response beyond a nod.

Alyssa asked, "Max, I... I saw what you did. Walking on water, waving your hands! You froze the tornado! It's blowing my mind! Are you... are you some kind of wizard?"

"No. Well, I don't know. Maybe. Sure," Max mumbled as she tried to get to her feet. Everything hurt. It seemed like nothing was broken, but many things were bruised or sprained or scraped.

Alyssa grabbed her elbow, "Let me help you!"

"You can't help me, Alyssa!" Max protested, although she didn't pull her arm away. Once she was on her feet and reasonably confident she could stay there unaided, she added, "Not unless you know a way to defeat an ancient, immortal psychopath."

"Well, in Ultima 1, when the evil wizard Mondain had the gem of Immortality that made him indestructible..." Alyssa started brightly. In response to Max's quizzical expression she added defensively, "What? I like retro gaming. You're not the only one who goes retro, Max!"

Max managed to suppress an eye-roll, "Okay, so how do you stop this invincible wizard?"

"You can't. You have to go back in time to before he got the gem and kill him then."

Max looked wide-eyed at Alyssa. This was just like Steph all over again! What was it with gamers and killing? But then, with Steph, they had only been talking about Mark Jefferson. How quaint and harmless he seemed now! But this was Jane; murderer, immortal, time-traveler. Jane who had told her, in no uncertain terms, that she would stop at nothing to restore her original reality. When Max thought Jane would kill again, this wasn't some abstract conjecture. If the loops kept happening, Max knew exactly who Jane would kill, and when, and how, over and over til one or both of them was destroyed.

Worse, she knew with a sinking ache that Jane was  _her_  problem. Not just Max Caulfield's problem but this very specific Max Caulfield right now. Other Maxes in other loops wouldn't get this chance, Jane would see to that. And she had nowhere else to go. No future to which she could postpone. If she left this dead reality, Jane would find her. Old and feeble though Jane appeared, Max was certain she would lose any confrontation between them. She shuddered remembering the strength of Jane's hands, like bony talons.

Max pursed her lips and nodded grimly.

"Oh my God, Max!" Alyssa gasped, "Oh my God! You're... you're actually going to do it, aren't you? Go back in time somehow?"

Max didn't answer. Her face wore a cold, gray expression of stern resignation.

Alyssa offered, "Max, I don't understand this, but it's the most exciting thing I've ever seen! Can I... help? I want to help!"

Max turned her head and looked back toward town. The surf had washed her south down the beach. They were about a block and a half from the Two Whales. Still not on fire! And this reality still existed, so there must still be a minute or two left!

She said, "There's only one person who can help me now!"

 

* * *

 

Fresh from the dark room on a mission to save Chloe Price, Max Caulfield stepped out of Mark Jefferson's car and surveyed the destruction of Arcadia Bay. Shattered buildings, tossed cars, dead whales. She had never seen anything like it!

But Max Caulfield had! The older Max Caulfield that is, the one who approached from behind, still wet from the bay and covered in sand. She had seen something exactly like it. A couple of times now. It was not a sight that improved on repeat viewing.

She called to her one-week-younger self, "Hey, Max! I'm gonna need those keys!"

Younger Max spun around and stared. Older Max looked pretty rough. She was sopping wet, wearing the red checked shirt that used to belong to Rachel Amber, torn and caked with sand. She sported bruises, scrapes and cuts on her face and arms and knees. She was limping and cradling her left elbow. She looked alien enough to younger Max that it seemed less like a miracle of time magic and more like meeting a bad Max Caulfield cosplayer.

"I don't know why, but I thought meeting another version of me would be more of a big deal," said younger Max.

"Back to the Future was wrong," nodded older Max. "Hey look, I don't have time for you to stand there slack-jawed. Let's do this." She held her hand out in what she hoped was the universal symbol for keys.

Younger Max looked down at the car keys in her hand and then back at her disheveled doppelganger, "You're ME right? Like, from the future? Are you here to warn me? Should I not go find Warren and his photograph?"

"Sorry, better make this a spoiler-free zone I think. You just keep doing what you were doing and pretend you never saw me, after you give me those keys."

Younger Max's shoulder's slumped. She looked down at the keys with uncertainty, "Do we ... do we win?"

"We'll win if you give me those fucking keys already!"

"Okay, jeez!", said younger Max, and tossed the keys to her older self. As she moved, the light from the headlights caught on her necklace. Three bullets on a leather thong. Chloe's necklace. She caught older Max staring at the necklace and asked, "Can't you tell me anything? Like, what's up with the tornado? Why is it frozen? It doesn't look like it's moving."

"Oh. I did that," said older Max, as if it was nothing. "I needed more time here. There's still something I have to get before I can leave. I need you to wait when you get that photo. Don't focus into it for like an hour. Just hang out with Warren for a while. I know that's a lot to ask, but it's important."

Younger Max nodded. Her hand went to the bullet necklace. Older Max wondered if it was really only a week ago she had been uncertain how she felt about Chloe. She remembered around that time wondering in her journal whether what she felt for Chloe was friendship or love. Well, a week of missing her had answered that, with a capital L. She knew what she asking her younger self to do; having to sit and wait for an hour instead of rushing back in time to save Chloe would be a gnawing, difficult thing. All the time magic in the world can't soothe the impatience of the heart.

"Okay, one spoiler," called older Max.

Younger Max turned back expectantly. Older Max continued, "When you see Chloe, tell her you love her!"

Younger Max's face brightened with relief, " _When_  I see Chloe?"

"Tell her you love her."

"I think... I think I do!", said younger Max with surprise.

"I know."

"We love Chloe," said younger Max, reflectively, tilting her head and clasping her hands over her heart, as if the feeling would escape if she didn't catch it.

"Yeah. Yeah we do," said older Max, managing a weary smile.

"So... do we win?"

Older Max clicked the key fob, unlocking Jefferson's car. "You buy me that hour and I'm gonna go find out."


	9. What Becomes of Us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How many realities have you been through? And in how many of them did Chloe love Max? 
> 
> Was it all of them? 
> 
> Because I think it was!

Chapter 9; What Becomes of Us

Nothing natural could come between  
Enamored mortals such as we  
The winds may blow us far apart  
But nothing will undo our hearts

Nothing natural could turn the tide  
That washes over both our lives  
By day we'll burn, by night we'll rust  
And who knows what becomes of us?

-Jill Sobule, Nothing Natural

 

**June 3rd, 1978**

Max closed the door behind her, stepping through from another time, and the heavy sound of the mechanism echoed up and down the hollow insides of the lighthouse. She had snuck in here as a child, once or twice with Chloe when they were playing pirates, and it was striking how little the place had changed between then and now. Or, rather, now and then, Max supposed. It would be another 15 years or so before she and Chloe were even born. Max found a landing partway up the spiral stairs where a freestanding pair of metal lockers and wooden crates gave her a good hiding spot with a view of the door. And then she just had to wait.

Before leaving the night of the tornado, she had taken the time to raid Chloe's wardrobe and wash up. Nobody had been home at the Price house, but the door was unlocked. Or rather, it  _was_  unlocked. She had dearly wanted to carry Rachel's shirt with her to the end, a reminder of Rachel and Chloe and Steph and the ties that bound all four of them, but it had been ruined by her misadventures. She had selected Chloe's Firewalk shirt and the first pair of jeans she found that fit, but these had not been the only things she had taken from the Price household.

It had been the third time she had been in Chloe's room without Chloe. The first was in the alternate reality where Chloe was paralyzed. The second, after Chloe's funeral, with Joyce. And despite what she had thought so many years ago on the day she and Chloe dug up their time capsule, her most recent visit really would be the last time she would ever see that room.

Soon, Jane would arrive. Not the monster she knew, but the original. Young Jane. Monster in training. Old Jane wouldn't loop back into her younger body until a few minutes later, once the change to history had become irrevocable; once Jane's mother and aunt had given up trying to enter the lighthouse and had left the park. A few minutes to set destiny in motion. Exactly when those minutes would come, Max didn't know. Some time today, but it could be literally at any time. The cold, still air made her shiver and yawn. She hoped she wouldn't fall asleep before it happened.

As an experiment, she stretched out her left hand and flexed.

Nope. Still no fast forward.

Max wasn't sure exactly how long she'd been asleep when the loud clunk of the door roused her, but it must have been several hours given the stiffness in her back and legs from the dank concrete floor. Peeking out from her hiding spot, she saw another girl had entered the lighthouse and locked the front door behind her. She was listening intently at the door but suddenly stopped and looked behind her up the stairs. Max stifled a gasp, but it seems young Jane hadn't spotted her.

Young Jane was wearing those same stack-heel boots, stylish jeans and a black tank-top. The boots rung out a hollow clang as she walked partway up the grate metal stairs to peek out the window. She was a few steps below Max now, with her back to her.

Slowly, Max crept out from her hiding place. Holding the pistol in both hands, just like Chloe had shown her in the junkyard, she leveled it at Jane's back. She drew her lips tight and held her breath. She felt the trigger push back against her finger. Her hands shook. One little squeeze was all it would take. One little squeeze and it's over before it even began.

This is the woman who killed Steph, she forced herself to remember. Who threatened to torture Kate! Who killed William Price! Except... except she wasn't. Not yet. For the time being, this was still young Jane. A girl her own age. Her sister, almost. Staring at her from behind reminded Max of her contest entry photo; the self-portrait of the back of her own head in front of a myriad of photos.

She could imagine Steph and Alyssa and a thousand other voices screaming at her to fire, but she couldn't do it. Not like this, at least. Not in the back. Not if there was any hope of another way.

Max cleared her throat and said, "Jane? We need to talk."

"What are you doing? Don't shoot me!" cried Jane in surprise, cowering against the window.

Voice and hands shaking, Max replied, "I don't want to! I'm here to help you!"

"With a gun?"

"Well, no, I...", Max stammered. She glanced down at the gun for just a second and felt a strange sensation. Young Jane had taken advantage of the momentary distraction to activate her rewind. When Max looked up, she saw her counterpart extending her hand with a wicked grin on her face, and fair enough; this would have turned the tables on any other attacker. Max just adopted a wry expression and said, "You can't rewind me, Jane. We have the same power. I couldn't rewind you either."

Jane dropped her hand and stared at her, wide-eyed. Max struggled to read her expression. It didn't really seem to be fear, or even surprise!

Max explained, "I'm an alternate reality version of you. What you just did, saving your aunt? It works! She survives! Your mom has a much better life. But she and her sister go to school out of state, and she never meets your dad. My dad. Our dad. He marries a different woman and has me instead of you."

If anything, young Jane's expression became even more inscrutable. Max expected shock and alarm. All she got was glare.

Max continued, "But that's not important right now. What's important is that ever since then, you get stuck in a time loop! Every time you die, you wake up right back here in your younger body. Your body! Right now! It will happen in just a few minutes. She'll come! The old you, the one who's been through 100 lifetimes and, no offense, it made her mean and crazy. I want to save you from becoming that, if I can!"

Jane sneered, "You want to save me from becoming immortal?"

Max found herself nearly shouting, her hands were shaking, "She's awful, Jane! She's broken and miserable. Just imagine; the same 80 years or so over and over with no escape. A 'wretched semi-existence' she called it. And she'll erase you, overwrite you! She'll take over your body and you'll go away!"

"And you're proposing... what exactly? You want me to unlock that door and let my aunt die? Revert my change?"

"No! I want you to come with me! We'll escape to another time! I'm thinking maybe if you're not here, the old you won't have anywhere to jump into and she'll just go away, and then, you'll be free. We both will! There's... there's got to be a way! I don't know if we'll ever be friends, Jane, after what you did to Rachel, but we are sisters, in a way. We can go back, we can save Rachel from the blizzard. We can make a life where we're both happy. With everything we can do, I know we can find a way we can both just live in peace! We've got to!"

"What if you're wrong? What if I come with you and this supposed old me jumps into my body anyway? What if it's tied to my age or my body and not where or when I am?"

"Well... then..." Max looked down at the gun in her hand. It still felt so alien seeing it there. The heft of it, the chill of the metal, the smell of the oil. These were not things that belonged in Max Caulfield's hand. She was trying to work out in her head what it would even mean if she killed Jane just after the start of a loop. Wouldn't that theoretically doom the universe to infinite loops of just those few seconds? She suddenly realized young Jane had noticed her staring at the revolver.

"Well, this sounds like a really stupid, crappy plan. I'm not going anywhere with you, fake Jane!"

Max leveled the gun at her. She tried so hard to keep her hands and voice from shaking as she said, "It's not a request." She walked out onto the stairs, a few steps above Jane. Jane stared a hole in Max while slowly raising her hands in surrender.

Then they both jumped as there was a sudden clanging noise from down below them. Jane's mother and aunt, outside, trying the door. Jane turned back to the window and watched them. "It's them! It's my mom and her sister," she cried. It was the happiest Max had ever heard her. "I have to see this!" she said plaintively.

There came a few more clangs at the door and the faint mutter of girls' voices through concrete. "They're turning away! They're leaving!" said Jane, pointing out the window.

Max nodded, but knew this meant they only had a few minutes left before another loop would begin. "We have to go," she said, taking a step down toward Jane.

"Just a minute!" Jane replied, waving her off. "I've heard about this moment my whole life. I want to watch them go! I want to know it worked!"

"That's when it happens, Jane!" said Max, taking another step closer. "That's when the loop starts! We have to go NOW!"

"If I go with you, I'll never get to see them again! You have to give me this!" cried Jane. Max took one more step closer.

Which, of course, was exactly what she Jane wanted. She turned and suddenly had a knife in her hand. She must have dug it from her pocket with the hand Max couldn't see while she was facing the window. Max had the briefest second to react, and she knew in vague terms she should do something with the gun, but her body couldn't make it happen before there was a sudden burst of blinding pain as the knife plunged through her right forearm. David's revolver flew from her fingers as she jerked back violently from the attack, stumbling on the steps. It flung over the side of the stairwell and landed with a noisy clatter down below.

"Okay, fake Jane, my turn to make some non-requests," crowed Jane, looming over Max.

Max turned and fled up the stairs in a panic, holding her wounded forearm to her chest. Jane followed her, stomping her boots loudly on each rung. "'Live in peace.' Ha! The universe didn't give me these powers so I could live in peace. I'm in control now! I can change anything I want!" she shouted.

"It doesn't have to be like this!" whimpered Max as she stumbled up the stairs, going slightly dizzy from blood loss and the circular motion.

"Oh yes it does, fake Jane! You want me to save Rachel fucking Amber? You think I killed her by accident? You think I regret it?"

Max reached the top of the stairs, at the door to the widow's walk. In a panic she fumbled with the heavy latch just as Jane caught up with her. She hip-checked Max against the door and held her there, pinning Max's bleeding arm painfully between her chest and the metal door. With one hand, she grabbed a handful of Max's hair, and with the other she held the knife against her neck.

"I want to know what your deal is and why you're so hell-bent on stopping me! See, I thought someone might be waiting for me here. That's why I brought the knife," Jane said, then leaned close and whispered right into Max's ear, "I found your note!"

"You found my warning and you came anyway?" gasped Max.

Jane laughed, "That's right! Did you think I would just wake up in the middle of the hall and not wonder how I got there when you hijacked my body? Did you think I'd just black-out for an hour and not notice everybody telling me how weird I was acting? You're warning me about some old Jane that's going to take my place, but you're the one who already tried that, aren't you? Feeding me this bullshit about erasing myself from existence. I don't know what you are or where you really come from, but nobody controls me, fake Jane, especially not some half-baked copy! So you're going to start telling me the truth or ... wait... what are you doing? I can feel it! You're doing something! You're using my power! You're doing something with the door!"

"Just... looking... for... something... familiar," managed Max through gritted teeth, as a yellow glow suffused the edges of the frame.

The door opened, and they both tumbled out through time.

 

* * *

 

**October 11, 2013**

The tornado greeted Max with its usual roar and a lash of cold rain. It was almost comforting to see it moving again after the temporal violence she'd had to visit upon it in the other dead reality. This reality was similar, and just as dead as the first, but it had rather a different ending.

As they spilled out onto the widow's walk, Max darted to the side of the door, but Jane stumbled in surprise. In her rage, she lashed out at Max with her knife, grazing her across the thigh and eliciting a high-pitched yelp. The winds caught the door as it swung open, tore it from its hinges and sent it spiraling away, smashing through the railing, behind Jane, opposite Max.

Searing pain shot through Max's leg, but worse still was the wrongness of it. She could feel the tear. Feel the space where her skin and muscles were no longer connected. Blood stained her jeans. Trying to keep her weight off it, she leaned against the railing for support as Jane taunted her, "Nice weather we're having! Is this supposed to intimidate me?"

Grimacing in pain and wide-eyed in fear, Max backed away from Jane around the circular walk.

Jane pursued at a deliberate pace, laughing, "Seriously? Where do you think you're going? It's a circle! A loop! You can't escape!"

Max kept backing away around, hobbling on one good leg and cradling her bleeding arm against her chest. Jane followed, not really making a serious effort to close the distance between them, shaking her head at Max's effort.

Max held up her hand as she retreated around the backside of the lighthouse top, engaging her rewind. "Stay back!" she said, trying to sound stern, but her voice betrayed her.

"Oh this is just  _sad!_ " mocked Jane, watching the raindrops fall upwards, "We literally just established we can't rewind each other, like 30 seconds ago. You were there! How do you not remember?"

"I don't want to hurt you," replied Max, still backing away.

"Yeah, well, I wouldn't worry about that. I'm the one with the knife, or did you forget that too?" grinned Jane, miming a stabbing motion at Max, who flinched and continued her circular retreat.

Just as they completed a full circuit around the walk, Max stopped retreating and said with quavering voice, "Last warning!"

"Duly noted!" laughed Jane, advancing with her knife raised and then, just a split second too late, she noticed it. The door was back! Max disengaged her rewind and it flew open. The winds caught it, tore it from its hinges just as before and sent it spiraling away, smashing through the railing. Except this time, Jane was standing right in its path.

The door struck Jane, trampling her down onto the railing, which snapped and sheared under the assault. When the door was gone, in its wake it left Jane hanging halfway off the ledge, impaled through the midsection on a foot-long vertical spike of rusted metal. The knife clattered off the brim and fell away into the sea. Jane wailed like a trapped animal, sounding to Max more enraged than pained.

Max couldn't help herself, gasping in shock and horror. She instinctively reached out her hand to rewind; after all, she had only intended to stun Jane with the door and disarm her. But then, she paused, closed her fingers and slowly lowered her hand. The rewind couldn't save Jane. All it could do is repair the railing around her. Even if it could save her, Max didn't think she wanted to.

Leaning against the lighthouse wall and cradling her bleeding arm, Max stood over Jane. Rain and windswept hair stung her eyes as she took in the sight of her fallen doppelganger against the background of the giant funnel cloud. Only a moment later, young Jane's countenance of shock and pain twisted into a knot of rage and frustration. Old Jane had arrived. The start of another loop.

"YOU!" she growled at Max. Looking at her own trembling hands covered in blood, she hissed bitterly, "Vicious, Max! I like it! What happened to the girl who didn't want to hurt anybody?"

"I don't know, Jane. Maybe you killed her. Over and over and over again," spat Max, bitterly.

Jane scrambled to try and get up, but she was in such an awkward position she had no good way to push off anything. The rough metal of the broken railing support held fast to the flesh of her torso. In desperation she tried pushing off the ledge and just falling, but the spike was bolted down to the floor on one end and bent at the other. She was going nowhere without aid. "How'd you do it? How am I here?" she demanded.

"Younger you followed me here. I tried to help her. Tried to save her from becoming you, but she kept trying to stab me and got herself impaled. And hey, you were right," Max said as Jane scowled at her, "Having to jump into your other self and you don't know what she's been doing? Hell of a weakness."

"You think you've won?", bellowed Jane over the roar of the wind, spitting up flecks of blood in her fury, "I will END you, Maxine Caulfield! Next loop I'm going to devote every minute to making you suffer!"

Max shook her head, "No, you won't. There's no you in 1978 any more. This is where your loop starts now. Right here. Like this. With a foot-long spike through your gut," Max replied plainly. Despite the winds and the rain pelting them both, her heart was settling into a profound calm. The monster couldn't hurt anybody any more. Max realized Jane must have felt the time jump as they spilled out the door, but she hadn't yet seemed to figure out, "This is a dead reality."

"This timeline only lasts for another minute and I know you can't leave without me." Max gestured around her at the skies, at the massive black mountain of a funnel advancing on Arcadia Bay. Not all realities end in a cataclysm, but this one seemed determined to go out in style. "When this timeline goes it's taking you and all this time travel bullshit with it. You end here, Jane. It all ends here!" The tornado obliged her with a well-timed burst of lightning.

Jane seethed, "You mincing little hypocrite! I  _saw_  you! I may have been the first to kill William Price but you were more than willing to kill him again when you thought it would help your idiot friend! How long before you become just like me? How long before  _you_  break something you're willing to kill to fix?"

"Never. I'm letting go, Jane," Max sighed and looked out at the storm. Hi, Rachel. I'll be seeing you soon. Real soon. Hopefully. And hopefully when we next meet we won't be screaming at each other. "When this reality ends I'm going to go with it! And then it will all be over forever! The new timeline will start from a 1978 where your aunt lives. Our dad marries  _my_  mom but you're not around to fuck with everything this time! Mark Jefferson and Damon Merrick stay in jail. William Price and Rachel Amber live. New Max gets a fresh start without all the horrible shit you did to find my trigger. No powers. No memory of any of this, or of you! I think she'll be a lot happier."

Anger gave way to fear on Jane's face as she confronted the specter of actual death for the first time in a hundred lifetimes, "And what will become of me?" she said quietly. Max could barely hear her over the din of the storm.

"I don't know," answered Max. "Maybe vanishing with a dead reality breaks your loop and you just go away. Maybe you get stuck repeating these last few seconds for eternity. I don't really care. But you won't hurt anybody any more."

"We'll see. You don't even know everything I've done. I haven't survived a hundred deaths to be beaten now! Don't you walk away from me, you FAKE! You THIEF! I'm the original! You're nothing compared to me! I'll find a way! I'll get out of here and I'll make you KNEEL!"

Max ignored her and turned back through the open doorway to the steps down. "Well, whatever you're going to do, do it quickly. The world ends in a minute," she called over her shoulder as she went down the stairs.

 

* * *

 

"Now get out of here! Do it before I freak! And Max Caulfield... don't you forget about me!"

"Never!"

From the lighthouse door, an older, wiser and much wearier Max Caulfield watched the final exchange between herself and Chloe Price. Her younger self turned her back and gazed into the blue butterfly photo. Chloe buried her face in her hands. Now or never. Or maybe a little of both.

Max reached out and felt the flow of time like wind out the window of a moving car. She weaved her fingers through it and squeezed. The rain slowed to a crawl and then stopped in midair, frozen in place like stars. A dozen feet away stood Chloe Price. Her Chloe. This one would know who she was. Max turned her hand over and beckoned Chloe toward her, unfreezing her friend in time while holding everything else still.

Chloe looked up, "Max? What... I don't understand.", Chloe turned back and forth looking between the two Maxes, one frozen, gazing intently at the photo, the other standing in the doorway of the lighthouse. "I ... yeah I don't understand. Wasn't that door locked?"

"It  _was_  unlocked," offered Max, limping forward, one hand raised, fingers outstretched.

Chloe checked behind her. Other Max was still there, focusing on the photo. All around her the raindrops were hovering in midair. The din of the wind had stopped. The tornado was unmoving. Chloe felt a tinge of panic creeping up her spine. Only seconds earlier she had been ready to die for the sake of Arcadia Bay and now she was stuck waiting. The universe, it seemed, was not done toying with her.

Max pressed forward. Looking at her own outstretched hand she suddenly realized she wasn't actually exerting any effort. When she had first held time prisoner, to save Kate, what seems like months ago now, she had to grasp it, crush it, wrestle it to the ground. It was like flexing every muscle in her body at once. Now, it was almost scary how little effort it required; merely a fraction of her attention. The gesture itself was irrelevant. Stopping time was as easy as flicking a light switch. What was she becoming?

Chloe asked desperately, "Why are you here? Didn't it work? Didn't we save everybody?"

Max smiled, "You did. In the end, you were the hero, not me. You saved everybody, Chloe Price. It was your idea, and it worked. Not for the reasons we thought, but it worked."

Chloe just shook her head, struggling to comprehend. As Max drew closer Chloe could see her friend was wounded, bleeding badly from one arm and leg, covered in scratches and bruises. She rushed forward through the still raindrops and caught Max in her arms.

Max pulled the blue butterfly photo from her pocket as she leaned into the taller girl's embrace. "I kept it, you know? I couldn't get rid of it. I felt like the only way I could accept losing you was knowing I could always go back and save you."

The Polaroid was badly battered; creased and waterlogged, but unmistakable. It was the last possession Max had. In some ways, the last remnant of a very different Max Caulfield. Her bag and camera had been abandoned by Jane in the research facility. Her phone, ruined by the plunge into the Bay. She wasn't even wearing her own clothes. This was the last physical thing left to her. The last piece of herself.

"Goddamn, Max, you're really bleeding here!" Chloe's shirt was staining red as Max leaned her weight against her, cradling her wounded arm between them both. Feeling Max shaking on her cut leg, Chloe reached down and scooped her up in her arms and carried her to the park bench overlooking the sea.

"I wanted to save you. To use this photo and go back and make the other choice. I almost did. So many times. But I couldn't, because it was your idea. You were willing to die to save everybody else, and I couldn't tell you no. I couldn't force you to live in a world where I had taken that decision away from you."

"Max, please just shut up and let me wrap that arm!", Chloe took off her jacket and was trying to tie the sleeve to crudely tourniquet Max's wound.

"So I hope you don't mind, but I made us a new reality," Max let the butterfly photo fall from her hand as she held it up so Chloe could bandage her wound. "A whole new world, from all the way back in 1978, and there, you don't have to die, and neither does Rachel or William or Steph. And there is no tornado and no paralyzing car crash. But... THIS Max... and THIS Chloe... and that magical week we spent together; all the wonderful and awful things we did. It's gone forever. As soon as I let go, that other me will travel into that photo. When she does, this reality ends and the new one takes hold. We end here."

"No Max!" Chloe grasped her by the shoulder, "You don't have to end! You always come through these crazy reality changes! You can get out, right? I... I don't want you to end!"

"No, don't you see? That's what I did wrong. It's not about me! It's about you and your Dad and Rachel and Steph and Kate and everybody else. If I really care about helping people, what does it matter if I remember doing it? If I keep holding onto this power so I can make every little change I want then I'm going to turn into some sick wannabe overlord, some puppet-master. I've seen where that path leads, Chloe! It's better this way! There'll be a new Max, and she won't know any of this! With luck, she won't ever discover her power. She won't need it! But... things will be so different. New Max and New Chloe may never reconnect like we have. Without Jefferson teaching at Blackwell, I probably won't come back to Arcadia Bay, and even if I do, you might be away at college, or with Rachel. The new us may never discover what we have. I don't know what's going to happen. But we'll be alive. And we'll be free."

"And Rachel? How do you know she'll be okay?"

"Jefferson won't be a part of her life, or Nathan's life. Nathan won't have any reason or any way to drug Rachel. Or Kate. Or you! And do you know someone named Damon Merrick?" Chloe's face knit into a furious scowl. Max took that as a yes. "He won't be around either. Whatever he does to Rachel's mom won't happen. She'll have a fair chance."

As Chloe processed everything Max was saying, she broke into a huge smile. Tears slid down her cheeks, "My Dad's going to be okay? And Rachel? Max, I'm so happy! It's a real second chance. For all of us, even Sera! You're a miracle worker! Who could ask for anything more?"

"But we go away."

"Max, if you think about it, that's already happened to me like, what, 10 times this week? It's not dying. It's just forgetting!" Chloe caressed the scrape on Max's forehead gently with the backs of her fingers. "It looks like you've got a lot you could stand to forget."

"But we have to ... give up... you know... we have to give up...", Max said, gesturing meekly back and forth between Chloe's heart and her own, looking at the ground.

"Look!" Chloe gripped Max by the shoulders. She bent her neck down the shorter girl's level and tilted her head to the side, "I am in actual-factual romantic love with you, Maxine Caulfield, and I kind of always have been! And it's not because of your power or that night we broke into the pool or solving mysteries together. Those are all just symptoms of you being the awesome you that you are.  _That's_  the part I love. This! The core of you!" She thumped Max hard in the sternum for effect. "I mean, fuck, here you are bleeding all over the place and all you can do is apologize to me because you think your perfect new reality might not be perfect  _enough!_  That's not going to change just because we had different experiences along the way. So I don't want to hear any more about how we won't know each other or we won't see each other. How many realities have you been through? And in how many of them did Chloe love Max? Was it  _all of them_? Because I think it was!"

"It was ... most of them. There was one where you didn't like me... but then, I guess that reality didn't really have a Max."

"Well, then that's a stupid reality! Let's not go there! My point is, we're not giving up a goddamn thing! And this...", she mimicked Max's gesture between their two hearts, ending with her hand on Max's chest. "Don't you worry about this! This will be just fine!"

Max beamed at her, "You know, I told myself to tell you I love you. I should have known you'd beat me to it."

"You could say it anyway. I don't mind."

"I love you, Chloe Price!"

Chloe smiled and blushed. She tried but failed to adopt a serious expression as she said, "I knew you were going to say that. Do you think I have time powers too?"

"Chloe, how are you so okay with this? I'm scared shitless! I'll never know how you found the courage to face... "

"There's going to be a Rachel who gets to live? And a Max who doesn't have to be responsible for the whole world? And a Sera who gets to keep her daughter? And a Chloe who gets to keep her dad? Fuck yeah, I'm okay with that! Even if that Chloe isn't me."

"There's going to be a Max who didn't have to bury you!"

Chloe nodded vigorously with a sympathetic look and clutched Max's head to her chest, "I can't imagine what that was like for you, Max! See what I mean about forgetting? I only wish I could tell Rachel somehow. I wish she could know what you did for her."

"I didn't do much, really. I'm just cleaning up someone else's mess. Not  _all_  of her mess, but, well, that's on her," said Max cryptically, stealing a furtive glance at the top of the lighthouse.

"How long can you hold this?" Chloe asked, looking around at the still raindrops hanging in the air.

"I don't know. It's... it's actually kind of scary easy now. I don't want to have this any more. Nobody should have this!"

"So this is it, huh? This is the way the world ends?"

"Not with a bang...", mused Max.

"Okay, one last thing, and then you can let go."

Max didn't even get the chance to ask what it was before Chloe's lips were on hers. After everything she had felt in the last few hours; the musty straitjacket, the chill waters of the Bay, the point of Jane's knife; asphalt, stone and steel; sorrow, rage and despair; kissing Chloe Price again seemed to her the softest, warmest, sweetest sensation she could imagine. She felt like her nervous system was no longer equipped to process this kind of joy. She felt like her body would evaporate into a cloud of tingling lights.

When they broke apart, Chloe's hands cupped Max's face. She wanted to melt into a puddle. "Okay, when you put it like that, maybe I'm not so worried about what the new reality holds for us."

"Told ya!"

Chloe held her close, placing Max's wounded arm up on her own shoulder to keep it elevated. Using the other sleeve of her jacket, she kept steady pressure on the cut on Max's leg. Max found neither wound really hurt much any more. Or maybe she just didn't care. All the pain would be over soon.

Chloe asked, "You don't think destiny will find some way to fuck this up again, do you?"

Max shook her head, "Not any more! Someone once told me there is no destiny. Everything we thought was destiny had a cause. Everything we thought was set in stone was set there by someone else. Things are  _made_  to be, not  _meant_  to be."

"Some things are meant to be," said Chloe, leaning her forehead against Max's.

"I'm glad you're with me, Chloe Price, here at the end of all..."

"Really, Max? Tolkien?" interrupted Chloe with a grin. "You are such a nerd, it's adorable! See? This is why I'm not worried! Sooner or later, new Max will be adorable in new Chloe's presence. She won't even be able to help it! And then new Chloe will fall for her. It's just the way of things!"

Max smiled and tilted her head, "You really think so?"

"Head over heels, Caulfield!" replied Chloe, spinning her hands in the air to illustrate, "Head over fucking heels!"

Max traced Chloe's cheek with her hand. She wished they had more time. Then again, they had all the time in the world. It just hadn't happened yet.

"Good bye, Chloe!"

"See you real soon, Max!"

And Max let go.

Max let go and for a split second, the rain fell, the tornado howled, the wind raged, but Max and Chloe didn't care, lost in each other. Max let go and her younger self completed her focus, ending that reality just as before, but Max and Chloe didn't care, confident they were making way for something better. Max let go and all was swept away into silence and void, but Max and Chloe didn't care. There was nothing left of them that could.

Max let go and it was the end of everything.

And also.

The beginning.


	10. Epilogue: The beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And who knows what becomes of us?

**October 11, 2013**

 

"Are you nervous? What am I saying? Of course you're nervous. It's the Max Caulfield default state of being!"

Chloe flashed Max her usual needling grin; the one that said, 'I tease, but I love.' Max, as usual, didn't notice. In white plaid flannel pajama pants and a t-shirt dotted with rolling cartoon chickens, Max studied the book in her hands by the light of the moon. Glossy black and white moments of desperation stared back. She shuddered and closed the book, lifting her eyes to meet Chloe's.

"I've never done anything like this before!", she said, offering the doe-eyed look that always made Chloe feel she should rush forward.

"I know."

"I don't wanna start a forest fire."

Chloe smirked. It was Friday night in Seattle and not surprisingly, the air in the Caulfields' back yard hung damp and heavy. It had only just stopped raining about two hours before. The patio had dried out, and the fire pit, but all around them the grass was still wet. It had taken her some searching to find a reasonably dry spot to set up the tent. To accidentally set fire to all this would be quite an act of pyromancy. "Well, luckily, you have me to guide you."

"Where would I be without you, Chloe Price?"

Chloe shrugged, "Somehow you got by without me over the last five years. Well, not really five years I guess. What was the longest we were apart?"

"Nine months," answered Max, immediately. "Between your birthday and Christmas 2010."

"Whoa, you counted?"

Max paused a moment, calculating if she should be embarrassed at that admission, and then nodded.

"I counted too," confessed Chloe. They both grinned stupidly at each other and then looked away. To escape the ensuing awkward silence, Chloe knelt down and began rolling strips of newspaper and laying them across the bed of the fire pit. "You know, if you really wanted an expert, you should have asked Rachel. This is much more her area!"

"Well, that just makes me more nervous!"

"I just mean she's a bit of a firebug. I'd bet the only reason she even agreed to play tonight is because Steph rolled her a character that could burn things. Here, hand me that kindling. Are you still sure you want to do this?"

"I do."

"'Cause from what you told me, you could still sell that on eBay for like $500, right?"

"No. Burn it."

"I thought you were all about this Jefferson guy. What happened?" asked Chloe as she arranged the kindling over the bed of rolled newspaper.

"Remember when I was looking at art schools with good photography programs for my senior year?"

"Yeah, last spring. Blackwell didn't quite make the cut." Looking down at the grey, loose-fitting University of Washington shirt that would serve as her pajamas for the night, Chloe added, "Which is good, honestly. It would have been hella ironic if you'd gone back to Arcadia Bay the same year I came up here to get my U-Dub on."

"Like rai-ee-ain on our wedding day."

"Still illegal in Oregon. For now."

"We're not in Oregon any more," corrected Max.

Chloe clasped Max's hand and pointed in the direction of the city, "You're right! Quick! To the registrar of deeds!"

Max blushed. That wasn't what she meant and Chloe knew it. She jerked her hand back with a smirk and continued, "Anyway, the best one I could find was at this school called Northfield, which is way over in Massachusetts, and you put me in touch with that girl from Blackwell who transferred there?"

"Victoria Chase," nodded Chloe with a grin, "What'd you think of her?" She returned to her kneeling position and continued prepping the fire pit.

"She seemed nice," shrugged Max. "She told me about the program over there. Sounds like she was loving it, but my folks can't afford to send me. Still, we got to chatting a lot about photography, and I brought up Mark Jefferson."

"Victoria Chase seemed nice? Is this the real world or did we wake up in some kind of crazy alternate reality?"

"What? She did! When she comes back for Turkey Day we're going to meet up and tour a couple galleries! Anyway, I knew Mark Jefferson had gone to jail for drugging and kidnapping a model, I just didn't... I don't know. I didn't really think about it. It was just words, you know? But Victoria... her family runs the Chase Space gallery here in Seattle."

"Sure," nodded Chloe. Victoria always made sure everybody knew that.

"So Victoria actually knew the model through her parents. Hearing the victim's account, even second-hand. Holy shit! This guy is fucked up, Chloe! I'm glad he's in prison! I still have nightmares sometimes where I'm the one tied up in his studio, and that's just from hearing about it. I can't believe I liked his work! I can't believe I made excuses for him!" Max clenched her jaw and glared at the cover of the once-prized photobook.  _The Dark Corner_ , a photo novella by Mark Jefferson. Photo novella. Pretentious fuck! Once, Max had admired the stark lighting, the challenging composition, the broken-down poses of the models. But now, the thought that one or more of them actually had been broken in the course of shooting made her stomach turn. She didn't want to own this any more. She didn't even want to touch it. She tossed it angrily to the ground, scuffing the cover on the patio stones.

Scooping the book up, Chloe replied, "Well, in that case it will be my distinct pleasure to help you set him on fire vicariously. I mean, even more so than usual." With relish, she broke the spine and splayed it prostate and spread-eagle over the wedge of an upturned piece of firewood.

Max felt nothing watching Chloe mangle the once-precious pages. Fuck you, Mark Jefferson. "Do it, Chloe!"

Chloe flicked the firelighter into life and touched it to the corners of the newspaper base. The fire crept in eagerly from the edges, licking the kindling and the pages of Mark Jefferson's lone published work. As the book itself started to smolder, Chloe sat on the rolled up sleeping bag and warmed her hands on the growing flame. She looked up at Max, who stood with a determined expression undermined only somewhat by the cuteness of her pajamas. Chloe had never quite understood Max's obsession with Mark Jefferson's work. In fact, the photobook and its place of honor in Max's room had always made Chloe a little uncomfortable during her visits. To think that Victoria Chase, of all people, would be the one to get through to her! But then, it wasn't the first time Victoria had seen something other people missed.

"You know it was Victoria Chase who first clued me in about how I felt about you? Just something she said. I didn't even get it at the time, but once I figured it out... that's when I knew. So, if you do see her over Thanksgiving, tell her I said she was right, and thanks!" Chloe mused to the fire.

Max sat next to Chloe, "Wait, didn't you just tell me that trip with your Dad was when you knew?"

Chloe paused. She had just said that, during the drive over here, but in their own way, both statements were true. "Well," she countered, "maybe being with Max Caulfield is falling in love over and over and over again!"

"Over and over and... over... again...", parroted Max, her eyes glazing over. She had the strangest sense of deja vu. Hadn't she just said that? No, Jane said it! No, she had said it to Jane. Wait, who the hell was Jane? She stared into the fire blankly, her mind elsewhere entirely, momentarily assaulted by memories of a history that no longer was; a drive-by from a dying reality. The Bay. The dorm. The van. The bus. The barn. The bunker. The lighthouse, inside and out and over and under. Photographs and wheelchairs and syringes. Faces she didn't know, but yet somehow suddenly had names for. Kate. Warren. Frank. David. Alyssa.

Jane.

"Did I ever tell you about the time Rachel and Victoria ... Max, you okay? You spacing out on me again... or...?"

"I must have fallen asleep for a second. I had this weird dream... or vision. Just... little flashes...disconnected... like images being worn away," Max responded. Her eyes looked past Chloe. Her hands pawed at the air. "I saw myself going to Blackwell. You had short, blue hair and tattoos. There was a funeral, and a hospital. We were on the train tracks, at the diner... the cliffs... There was this huge storm. Massive! And Rachel was there, somehow. And Steph! And there was another version of me... sometimes, she was older, and she was chasing after me with a knife!"

"Wow! Intense! What happened? Who won?" Chloe put her arm around Max and pulled her closer. She took Max's hand and squeezed it. A short distance away, Mark Jefferson's work caught fire and burned.

"I don't know," Max replied, shaking her head, "Even as I'm describing it, I'm having trouble remembering it. I can't recall... if there any sort of order to things or... just a series of flashes. Photos, being torn and discarded. Like it's going away, now. Evaporating! Like it's ... like it's over."

"I love that you even dream in photos. How'd I look with blue hair?"

Max pondered. The memory of the dream was slipping from her mind. There was an odd finality to it. Somehow she knew these were things that were done and gone, challenges she would never have to confront. It felt like simultaneously more than a dream and less than nothing. The lighthouse. The storm. The other Max. The names she had suddenly known were now blinking out of her head again, one by one, forgotten. Just like the  _Dark Corner_ , they were gone now, flitting away into ash on the breeze. The final fleeting image was of the other Chloe's face, ringed in cerulean hair, cut in a ragged bob, a smirk masking a pain Max couldn't fathom. And then that, too, was gone, swirling away in a puff of smoke. She was left with nothing but a feeling. A warmth in her heart.

Max squeezed Chloe's hand and smiled at her.

"It suited you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Into the Rebootverse
> 
> I debated a long time whether or not to do an epilogue. I felt, and this is going to sound self-indulgent so just bare with me, I felt that the greatest favor I could do these two characters was to hit the reset button and then just let them be. Like here's a whole new world minus all the bad stuff, and you're free to do whatever.
> 
> However, I kept coming up with little stories that would fit into the post Here at the End of All Things reality, and I'd like to tell at least two of them. None of them will be quite like this fic. The whole point of this fic is that there can't be anything afterward that's like this fic. Don't expect Jane's revenge. They will be decidedly fluffier. In fact one of them is arguably the fluffiest fluff that ever fluffed a fluff. I started fleshing out two of these stories and they both got a little too long to work as an epilogue, but the intersection between them is the scene you've just read. It didn't really fit into either of the other two stories, and it was short, so I decided it would make an apt epilogue. An aptilogue. I hope those of you who wanted an epilogue are satisfied with it.
> 
> If you are interested in seeing more the post-reboot-ending world, please feel free to follow, and thanks to everybody for the comments and reviews thus far!


End file.
